Texas court of appeals recognises Pakistani divorce

Hearing case of a couple divorced in Pakistan but residing in US, court says Pakistani divorce is valid in US

A Texas Court of Appeals panel has upheld Pakistani divorce should be recognised under Texas law, according to the Washington Post.

Hearing a case of a Pakistani couple divorced in Pakistan but residing in the United States, the court said, “The question before the trial court was not whether the parties satisfied the statutory requirements to file a divorce petition in Texas, but whether to recognise the Pakistani divorce as a valid divorce that terminated Ashfaq’s marriage before Fariha filed her petition in Texas.”

Fariha Ashfaq and Mohammad Ashfaq were married in Pakistan in December 2007. After their marriage, Mohammad spent a few months with Fariha in Pakistan, then returned to his home in Fort Worth.

Fariha stayed in Pakistan till June 2009 when she was granted a visa to join Mohammad and they lived together in Fort Worth as husband and wife.

However, soon after, in late 2009 when the couple was visiting Pakistan, Mohammad divorced Fariha under the Pakistani law. Since then, both of them returned to the US and Mohammad remarried. But in 2011, Fariha petitioned for divorce in Texas and argued that the Pakistani divorce decree should not be recognised in Texas.

However, rejecting Fariha’s argument, a Texas court penal upheld under Pakistani law a Pakistani divorce can be granted whenever the parties are Pakistani residents or Pakistani citizens, “regardless of whether they live in another country, ‘whether permanently or for a fixed time.’”

Further, at the time of divorce, Fariha was at the time solely a Pakistani citizen and Mohammad a dual US-Pakistani citizen.

A witness testified Fariha’s parents accepted maher - a fixed dowry payment owed upon divorce and said it equates to acceptance of the divorce. She did not counter Mohammad’s argument at trial that her acceptance of the maher bars her from denying the validity of the divorce.

However, she argued that the Pakistani divorce should not have been recognised “because it denies due process and is fundamentally unfair” — thus distinguishing it from, say, Canadian, Mexican, English divorces, which are routinely recognised in Texas.