Hend Magdy did not enjoy a happy married life; she separated from her husband a year after marriage, having discovered that he was addicted to both drugs and alcohol. She tried in every way to get him to quit, but to no avail.
After the separation, Hend entered a spiral of alimony cases to obtain maintenance for her young son, but the husband refused outright to pay maintenance for their only child. She bore her child’s expenses herself after taking a job at a beauty centre on a salary of EGP 1,455 a month, and received only EGP 500 a month from Nasser Social Bank, as she told us.
The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics revealed that the divorce rate rose by 14.7% in 2021 compared with 2020. Its statistics also revealed a 5.9% rise in divorce cases and a 5.6% increase in marriage contracts in 2022, and a rise in the urban divorce rate from 2.5 per thousand in 2021 to 3.5 per thousand in 2022, while the divorce rate in rural Egypt reached 1.9 per thousand in 2022. The average number of divorce cases reached 22,500 a month in 2022, 739 a day and 31 an hour, one divorce every 117 seconds, that is, less than two minutes.
In this regard, a field study in the village of Menyet El-Heit in Fayoum Governorate, entitled “Social and Economic Factors of the Phenomenon of Divorce in the Early Years of Marriage”, identified several reasons for divorce, including the educational gap when the wife holds a higher qualification than the husband, the hidden struggle for maternal authority on the part of the wife’s or the husband’s mother, the wife’s high professional level and the wife’s high income.
Law No. (25) of 1920 on maintenance provisions stipulates that “maintenance is due to the wife from her husband from the date of a valid contract if she gives herself to him, even constructively, even if she is well-off or of a different religion from him, and the wife’s illness does not prevent her entitlement to maintenance. It includes food, clothing, housing, medical expenses and other things.”
Gamal Fouriez, a consultant psychiatrist, believes the recent rise in divorce rates in Egypt reflects deep behavioural and social changes that some groups in Egyptian society are going through, which affect marital relations. Fouriez explains to Zawia3 that some personalities find justification either for not marrying or for ending marriage through divorce, as a result of incompatibility between the spouses from the start, with individual differences between them playing a big role in these separations.
He points out that some psychological factors, such as suspicion, personality disorders, indifference and failure to take responsibility, along with excessive interference by families in resolving marital disputes, contribute greatly to worsening disputes and increasing divorce rates.
Fouriez adds that economic conditions may not directly affect individuals in psychologically stable societies, but a disturbed personality finds it difficult to adapt to economic challenges, which leads to increased pressure and ultimately divorce. Behavioural disorders may also push some husbands to seek other relationships without regard for the rights of the wife or children.
Samia Qadri, professor of sociology at Ain Shams University, attributes the rising divorce rates to several reasons rooted in Egyptian culture, such as family interference in marital disputes, especially in the countryside, and mistreatment between spouses. She also points out that sexual relations between spouses, which may be strained because of the customs of a conservative society, are often overlooked as a main cause of divorce.
Samia explains that the rise in divorce rates since the 1990s is linked to the media’s influence in shaping unrealistic perceptions of married life. She attributes this influence to Turkish and Indian series that presented idealised models of marital relations, which raised spouses’ expectations and made them strive for an unrealistic image. This contradiction between the image presented by the media and the economic and cultural reality in Egypt has led to more marital disputes and separations.
Samia points out that alimony problems are partly due to a patriarchal upbringing, as some husbands circumvent the law by hiding their salary details to avoid paying appropriate maintenance. In her view, these practices are part of the continuing dominance of a patriarchal mindset that affects women and children after divorce, threatening the children’s future and greatly affecting their lives.
The sociology professor explains that the growth of women’s movements and increased awareness of women’s rights have helped empower women to challenge traditional patriarchal authority, leading to the emergence of the term “independent woman” or “independent wife”, who seeks to live her life without submitting to traditional norms.
She says: “We live in a society dominated by materialism and individualism, where the desire for self-fulfilment has grown at the expense of human relationships. These new values adopted by some spouses have contributed to the deterioration of marital relations, and as a result separation rates have risen and problems such as alimony have increased.” She points out that this social transformation reflects a deeper change in the nature of the marital relationship in a changing world.
According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, the number of final divorce rulings reached 11,194 in 2021, an increase of 38.4% over the total rulings in 2020. Divorce rulings in urban areas reached 10,888, an increase of 37.4%, while in rural areas they reached 306, or 2.7% of the total. In August 2023, CAPMAS issued its annual marriage and divorce bulletin for that year. According to the bulletin, divorce rates have been rising steadily since 2009, and 2022 recorded the relatively highest divorce rate in the last ten years, with 269,800 divorce cases compared with 254,800 in 2021, an increase of 5.9%, while the average number of divorce cases reached 31 an hour.
Unfair Alimony Laws
Human rights lawyer Intisar El-Saeed, chair of the board of trustees of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law, explains how many husbands circumvent alimony dues by hiding their real assets, such as property and bank funds, which leads to paltry alimony compared with their real incomes. She adds that the more a wife is able to prove her husband’s real income, the greater her chance of obtaining fair maintenance for her children.
Speaking to Zawia3, El-Saeed points out that some women have been able to obtain their full rights by proving their husbands’ assets, while the majority suffer because of the difficulty of proving these financial assets through investigation procedures. As a result, some women may receive a paltry sum of no more than EGP 1,000 as monthly alimony.
El-Saeed stresses that obtaining a divorce ruling is possible if harm in married life is proven from multiple angles, such as violence or humiliation. She also praised the divorce risk insurance document recently adopted under Law No. 155 of 2024, stressing that it will provide protection for women.
The document aims to help women immediately upon divorce, since rulings in alimony cases take a year or more, and there are many women who do not work and have no fixed income, which leaves them confused, frustrated and desperate, especially if they have children, as the burden of providing for all their needs falls on them.
This document will be mandatory; its aim is to protect women and secure them financially immediately upon divorce, until they can obtain all their legal dues from the husband. The marriage registrar will have to make changes to the marriage document: the marriage contract will include a clause on the divorce risk insurance amount, to be agreed between the spouses before the marriage is concluded. The minimum for this document may reach EGP 25,000.
In the legal context, Karim Abu El-Yazid, a human rights lawyer, stresses that Egyptian law guarantees women their legitimate and legal rights after divorce, as set out in the Personal Status Law, including the right to compensation maintenance (mut’a) of no less than two years, in addition to waiting period (idda) maintenance after divorce, whether it is a major or minor irrevocable divorce, estimated at three months, as well as breastfeeding wages, child maintenance and custody wages.
He adds that the divorcee has the right to the deferred dowry recorded in the marriage certificate, in addition to keeping all the contents of the marital home recorded in the list of marital furnishings, and if the husband refuses, he faces imprisonment.
The Personal Status Law sets the maximum for garnishing wages, pensions and salaries in favour of marital maintenance, stipulating: 25% for the wife or divorcee, and 40% if there is more than one; 25% for the parents or either of them, and 35% for the parents or less; 40% for the wife or divorcee and one or two children and the parents or either of them.
The law proposed setting controls to determine maintenance as follows: maintenance is assessed according to the husband’s situation at the time it becomes due, and in cases of hardship it shall not be less than EGP 1,500; the judge must issue an order on petition within 48 hours for temporary maintenance for the wife. If the divorce takes place after ten continuous years, compensation maintenance is assessed at five years’ maintenance, with a minimum of EGP 2,000; a wife with whom the marriage was consummated in a valid marriage, if her husband divorces her without her consent, is entitled to two years of waiting-period maintenance with a minimum of EGP 1,500; and if the divorce takes place after fifteen years or more, compensation maintenance is assessed at seven years’ maintenance with a minimum of EGP 2,500.
Article (23) of the new Personal Status Law, No. 1 of 2000, on litigation procedures in personal status matters, stipulates that: “If the income of the person ordered to pay maintenance or its equivalent is the subject of a serious dispute, and the case papers do not suffice to determine it, the court must ask the Public Prosecution to conduct the investigation that enables it to do so. The Public Prosecution is also called upon to conduct the investigation itself and complete it within 30 days of receiving the court’s request, not from the date of its decision.”
The Economics of Divorce
Speaking to Zawia3, Ahmed Khattab, an economic expert and member of the Egyptian Canadian Council, stresses that inflation, rising prices and the current economic situation play a major role in the rising divorce rates in many families; the higher a family’s income, the lower the chance of separation, and vice versa. He added that there are many families with high financial means, yet that did not prevent separation; sometimes an abundance of money spoils life between the spouses, in his words.
He stresses the importance of women’s work under these economic conditions of inflation and high prices, noting that a woman can bear the costs of the recreational side, such as children’s sports activities and outings, which creates solidarity between the spouses and consequently reduces marital disputes and divorce rates.
Many studies have analysed the economic impact of divorce on the individual and society, pointing to increased burdens and economic costs borne by the family and society as a whole. These consist of the financial burdens or expenses borne directly by the parties to the dispute, because they are deducted from the resources available for their living, and also a cost to society, since it means spending part of its resources that could have been used for other purposes.
These costs include litigation fees, lawyers’ fees and the increase in living expenses the parties need after separation, as they have to move to new homes, including the burdens borne by the divorced woman, or by her relatives in solidarity with her or as her guardians, and what is borne by the divorced man or his relatives in solidarity with him.
The official costs of divorce in Egypt borne by the state treasury as a result of divorce cases amount to approximately EGP 13.75 billion, from litigation expenses and the salaries of judges, the Public Prosecution, experts, counsellors and Public Prosecution staff, including secretaries, employees and administrators, in addition to the cost of the security guards needed at courts while these cases are heard and while personal status rulings are enforced, especially cases concerning lists of furnishings and alimony, as well as court expenses and lawyers’ fees.
A judge’s average monthly wage is estimated at about EGP 7,000, given that a judge works 200 hours a month, including time for hearings and deliberations, examining lawsuits and reviewing laws of all kinds, which means each hour is valued at about EGP 35.
Looking at personal status cases such as khul’, divorce, paternity and alimony cases, we find that they take about ten sessions with the judge on average, and assuming the time spent examining a case is one hour, the cost of a single case in terms of the judge is estimated at about EGP 250, in addition to lawyers’ fees borne by the Ministry of Justice for citizens who are unable to appoint a lawyer or refuse to do so, as the court then has to appoint a lawyer for them in accordance with the law and the Constitution.
Among the indirect costs of divorce borne by the state are job deterioration and the collapse of a worker’s efficiency after separating from his wife or after the breakup of his family. A study estimated a public employee’s losses after separation at about EGP 1,040 a month, and a divorced wife’s losses at work at about EGP 572 a month, with both spouses working at less than 50% of their working capacity and productive efficiency. The total direct costs of divorce borne by the state amount to about EGP 17.85 billion, plus double this amount in indirect losses, given that the direct and indirect costs of a single divorce case amount to approximately EGP 298,200, bringing the total cost of divorce in Egypt to approximately EGP 35 billion.
In this context, Ahmed Khattab, the economic expert and member of the Egyptian Canadian Council, stresses the economic crisis that divorce causes for the individual, the family, society and the state as a whole. He explains to us: “Divorce is not only a socially undesirable phenomenon but also a material one, leading to additional budgets and financial burdens for both the family and the state; the man bears the maintenance of his wife and children, his personal expenses or the maintenance of another wife if he remarries after the separation, while the state bears budgets covering the period of dispute and litigation between the spouses until the alimony ruling for the wife is issued, and so on.”
He adds: “Divorce leaves the spouses distracted, which affects their work and consequently the state’s economy, because an individual’s peace of mind increases his working hours and therefore production, which positively affects the Egyptian economy, and vice versa. The spouses also go on to establish new family lives and have many children, and they may fail again this time too, and all of this negatively affects the Egyptian economy.”
He continues: “The state bears the expenses of female breadwinners whose husbands refuse outright to provide for them and their children, through Nasser Social Bank and the National Council for Women, at a minimum of EGP 500 a month, which costs the state a great deal every year; financial aid worth more than EGP 2 billion is provided to more than 500,000 divorced and widowed women, in addition to annual aid received by divorced women to pay maintenance and wages worth up to EGP 840 million a year through the Family Insurance Fund of Nasser Social Bank.”
Divorce Rates
Nesma El-Khatib, a human rights lawyer and feminist activist, says she receives about 15 alimony cases a month, or 180 cases a year, and in most cases the husband gets around the situation by evading the alimony due to the wife, either by not submitting or by falsifying his basic salary details, and by not disclosing them seriously.
She adds: “We prove the husband’s real income through police investigations, as the neighbourhood sheikh tries to establish the husband’s real salary details so that the wife can obtain the alimony due. Unfortunately, if the neighbourhood sheikh finds no information about the husband’s income and financial assets, it is difficult for the wife to obtain the maintenance due to her and her children. In addition, Nasser Social Bank itself does not give the breadwinning wife any financial assistance unless she obtains a court ruling for the alimony due, so the wife keeps going round in a vicious circle, because the alimony ruling depends on submitting papers proving the husband’s real salary details before she can get the assistance; this is unfair to the wife and the children.”
Nesma suggests: “The personal status laws on alimony must be amended and changed so that the wife can obtain her full dues and does not face any difficulties in raising her children and ensuring a decent, stable social life for herself.”
Data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics indicated a 14.7% increase in divorce rates in Egypt over the previous year, and this increase is not the only one; since 2009 divorce rates have been rising steadily, except in 2016 and 2020.
2009 recorded about 141,500 divorce cases, and the number rose to 149,400 in 2010. At a slower pace, divorce cases reached about 151,900 in 2011 and then 155,300 in 2012, followed by a notable gradual rise in 2013 to 162,600 cases. The increases then accelerated in 2014 and 2015, with 180,300 and 199,900 divorce cases respectively, before a slight decrease to 192,100 cases in 2016.
The indicator began to rise again the following year, recording 198,300 divorce cases in 2017, and continued rising to 211,600 cases in 2018 and then 225,900 in 2019. The second decrease, though slight, came in 2020, with 222,000 divorce cases, before the indicator rose again to record 254,800 divorce cases in 2021; the number of divorce cases that year reached 254,777, compared with 222,036 in 2020, an increase of 14.7%. Accordingly, there is a divorce every two minutes, 25 to 28 divorces every hour, and 630 cases a day, an average of 18,500 a month. 12% of these divorces occurred during the first year of marriage, compared with 9% in the second year and 6.5% in the third.
As for the age of divorce for men, the highest divorce rate was recorded in the age group (30 to 35). For divorced women, the highest rate was recorded in the age group (25 to 30).
In an attempt to find solutions to the high divorce rates and the resulting obstacles facing women and children in particular, the Egyptian legislator began trying to produce a new personal status law, which has not yet seen the light. Article (18) of the new draft law stipulates that the spouses have the right to add any conditions to the marriage contract, as long as these conditions do not contravene the provisions of the Constitution and the law and the established principles of Islamic Sharia; otherwise, the contract is valid and the condition void. This document has a set of clauses, including agreement on who owns the furnishings of the marital home, who alone has the right to use the marital home in the event of divorce or death, the situation of the children in the event of divorce and how to ensure a decent life for them, as well as agreement on what may be considered harm that permits a request for divorce.
The draft law also included the establishment of a Family Insurance Fund, obliging the husband to pay EGP 50 for each marriage, and the same in the event of divorce. This document will address many of the divorce problems the wife suffers from, such as alimony dues and others, in order to ensure a stable social life for the wife and children after separation.
