The draft amendment to the deferred dowry law in Iran is sparking widespread controversy among parliament, religious authorities, and women’s associations, in an attempt to achieve a balance between protecting the rights of the wife and reducing the financial burden on husbands.
The project proposes to reduce the limit that requires imprisonment from 110 Sikkah (a Sikkah is a gold piece equivalent to 10 grams) to 14 Sikkah, according to Karim Masoumi, a member of the Judiciary and Rights Committee in Parliament, so that paying this amount is sufficient to avoid imprisonment, while the husband remains obligated to pay the remaining amount later, in a way that guarantees the wife her full rights.
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The project also allows the two parties to agree on higher amounts through personal reconciliation, in an attempt to reach a fair formula that preserves the rights of both parties.
According to a report by the Iranian Tasnim Agency on July 8 of this year, of the more than 17,000 prisoners in the country due to non-criminal cases, more than 2,000 people are imprisoned due to dowry-related complaints.
Of these, about 700 people owe amounts of less than 100 million tomans (less than a thousand US dollars), and they are mostly unemployed individuals or financially unable to pay the due dowries.
Last June, the head of the Legal and Judicial Committee in Parliament, Mohamed Sarkazi, announced that about 240,000 cases are filed annually in the country related only to dowries, and that more than 40,000 of them end in imprisonment before the final ruling is issued.
These numbers indicate that the dowry issue is one of the most important and problematic legal issues in family life in Iran.
Popular culture
In Iran, the dowry is often measured in what is known as a “sikka,” which is a gold piece weighing about 10 grams, roughly equivalent to a golden lira.
The official spokesman for the Parliament’s Judiciary and Rights Committee, Ali Azari, points out that the high value of the dowry is one of the main factors for the decline in marriage rates among young people, especially men, as the financial pressure resulting from the dowry leads to postponement or abstention from marriage, with social repercussions that include lower rates of family formation and aging of the population.
Azari added that the proposed reforms benefit from international experiences, including dowry insurance, money sharing, and enhancing inheritance rights for both parties, to ensure rights are protected without placing excessive financial burdens on spouses.
On the religious side, the office of the religious authority Ayatollah Jaafar Subhani in the city of Qom sent a letter to the Presidency of the Judicial Authority, in which it confirmed that the legality of the dowry is linked to the husband’s financial ability, and suggested amending the wording of the contracts to become “when possible” instead of “when demanded,” in a way that balances the wife’s legal right and protects the husband from imprisonment as a result of his financial inability.
In Iranian society, there are some common customs when determining the number of infallible dowries, as some husbands or families determine it according to the year of birth of the wife in the Iranian year, and this exceeds 1,300 sukkahs, or some religious people rely on the number of infallible people according to Shiites (which is 14), or the number of surahs of the Holy Quran.
These practices reflect a cultural and religious aspect in choosing the dowry, far from considerations of financial ability or the law, which adds a social dimension to the legal debate over the dowry.
The project to amend the dowry law in Iran remains a sensitive point at which legislation, Sharia, and social reality intersect, as it seeks to protect the family, support young people in marriage, and reduce judicial disputes, but it faces challenges from feminist blocs and religious preachers to ensure that the rights of any party are not infringed and to introduce the necessary social and cultural dimensions.
Women’s rights
In this context, legal expert Shima Gosha said that the current dowry law does not specify a ceiling or minimum for the dowry, and that many marriage contracts can be concluded without specifying the dowry, as there is no compulsion for that.
She explained, in her speech to Al Jazeera Net, that the current dispute in Parliament relates to how to implement the law regarding financial debtors, as a man can be imprisoned if he does not pay the dowry and does not submit a request for insolvency or a payment plan or the judge rejects his request, noting that this is part of a broader law that regulates all officially proven financial debts, and is not limited to the dowry only.
Qousha added that using alternatives, such as allowing the man to work outside the prison while wearing an electronic bracelet, could be a practical solution to paying the dowry in installments without placing a large financial burden on the state on the prison.
She also stressed that not all men who are unable to pay are negligent, and that the law must balance protecting women’s rights and ensuring that the legislative amendment does not turn into a unilateral change that weakens men’s obligations.
For his part, legal expert Kambiz Norouzi considered that the dowry in Iran has become a crisis in family rights due to ongoing inflation and high gold prices, and that previous methods for dealing with this issue were not effective and rather complicated the problem.
Norouzi explained, in an article in the Iranian Shargh newspaper, that the rise in railway prices makes paying the dowry an almost impossible task, and that paying the dowry in installments in recent years has become practically worth nothing, which puts women in a difficult position despite their full legal right to collect their dowry.
He pointed out that reducing the enforceable dowry from the previous 110 sukkahs to 14 sukkahs in the new draft law raises several problems related to injustice and the woman’s right to guarantee her standard of living after divorce.
Norouzi added that the real crisis lies in the lack of balance between the rights of men and women within the family, and that this problem can be addressed by reforming some laws to ensure relatively equal rights for both parties.
He explained that changes such as allowing women to obtain the right to work, education, travel, or agency in divorce without the need for the husband’s permission could reduce reliance on the dowry as a tool to achieve these rights, which reduces conflicts, reduces the need for imprisonment, and makes the implementation of the dowry more fair and realistic in light of the social and economic changes in Iran.