An Australian woman has taken to Sharia Court in an attempt to prove her marriage to a Bahraini man following his unexpected death, petitioning the courts to recognise her son as the man’s heir.
After taking legal action against the Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments Ministry, along with the man’s inheritors, two courts earlier dismissed her request to legally recognise her marriage to the deceased Bahraini.
The 55-year-old plaintiff has resorted to the Sharia Cassation Court in a final attempt to appeal the decisions and overturn the rulings of the High Sharia Court and Supreme Sharia Appeals Court.
The woman, who had grown up in Bahrain and met the deceased man in secondary school, claims that the two tied the knot in 1995 and that she gave birth to their son the next year.
Since there was no official record linking the boy and the father, the Australian is attempting to get the Bahraini government to recognise the now-27-year-old as his legal heir and to grant him his share of the inheritance as allotted by Islamic law.
Lawyer Abduljalil Ali has asked the Cassation Court to carry out a DNA test to prove the deceased’s paternity, to overturn the earlier rulings and to start the case anew providing the tests confirm the relationship.
“We request that the distribution of inheritance be halted until the case is concluded, to preserve the son’s share of his deceased father’s inheritance,” said Mr Ali in a statement presented to judges.
The lawyer referenced an article in Bahraini Family Law, which allows a non-documented marriage to be legitimised if one is able to prove that the requirements of a correct marriage were fully satisfied.
According to Mr Ali, the Shaikh who officiated the marriage failed to notarise the marriage contract or give a copy of it to the plaintiff, but has since died and cannot testify to that fact.
“Conflict occurred between the plaintiff and her husband’s family, with whom she was living with in the same house, and she had to move out to an apartment,” read court documents.
“Her attempts to contact her husband to sort things out had all failed. While pregnant, she had no choice but to go home, and in September 1996 gave birth to the man’s son in Australia.
“Because she had no marriage certificate, and the boy was born outside of his home country of Bahrain, she was unable to name him after his father. However, the late father always communicated with the child, who he gave an Arabic name, and everyone knew that the man had a son with that name.”
The lawyer described the lack of documentation as a failure on the side of the late Shaikh in fulfilling his duties and claimed that they were only allowed to wed after the Shaikh made sure she was Muslim.
At a hearing during the first appeals process, two men testified that they were present at the marriage contract signing – in accordance with the Sunni Islamic faith – and that they were official witnesses to the signing.
Meanwhile, the defendants, namely the man’s 74-year-old mother and three sisters, completely opposed these claims, and accused the plaintiff of lying so she could claim the inheritance.
The Bahraini man caught up in the relationship furore died in Salmaniya Medical Complex in 2022, aged 54.
“The plaintiff did not present any sound proof to support her claim that she was actually the wife of the defendants’ late relative,” the defence argued. “These claims dissipate simply by looking through official records, as ordered by the initial court, which did not contain a trace of the supposed marriage.
“The court even reached out to the records division a second time, but no marriage contract was found with the woman’s name on it.
“All of this proves that the plaintiff’s claim has no basis in reality and originates from her imagination, in a ploy to undeservedly receive the inheritance money,” claimed the defence attorney.
The defence also claimed that the Australian woman is still a Christian and is married to a Christian, and that her firstborn carries her Australian husband’s surname.
“The woman has no marriage contract, Islamic conversion document or divorce papers, but has a marriage contract to a Christian man, all while her lawyers purport that she was still the deceased man’s wife at the time of his death,” claimed the Bahraini attorney.
In opposition to these arguments, the plaintiff’s lawyers declared that ‘there can be no doubt’ about the validity of the marriage, and that all of the requirements of lawful paternity were satisfied.
The hearings continue.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
&uuid=(email))