Court grants custody of Bahraini boy to his Saudi grandma

TDT | Manama

The First Lower Sharia Court (Sunni Division) has recently rejected a lawsuit filed by a man and his mother, who demanded to transfer the custody of his child from his ex-wife’s mother to his mother. Defence Attorney Mujtaba Ahmed explained that the complaint was considered unjustified and the court ordered to grant the custody to his client’s mother, the child’s grandmother.

According to Ahmed, the plaintiff ’s pretext was that his ex-wife had married another man and shall be deprived from caring for their three-year-old son, as per the provisions of the law. Moreover, he argued that his ex-wife’s mother, the child’s grandmother, is “too old to take care of the child”, adding that she is a Saudi national and her living abroad, along with his son, is a big probability.

The plaintiff demanded the court grant his mother legal custodianship of the boy, as stipulated in Article 127 of Law 19 of 2017, with respect to the promulgation of the Family Law, which mentions that “if the custodian is a woman, she shall not be married to a stranger to the child in custody, unless the court decides otherwise for the interest of the child”, according to Sunni jurisprudence.

However, Ahmed explained that the court’s decision came as per Article 128 of the same law, which stipulates: “Custody is a joint duty of both parents together as long as they remain married. “In case of separation, the custody shall be for the mother, then the mother’s mother, no matter how high in lineage, then to the father’s mother, then the father, in accordance to the Sunni jurisprudence.”

Ahmed added: “The court summoned my client’s mother, the grandmother of the child in custody, to stand on her fitness and capability of raising the child and caring for him. “After reviewing her health condition, the court decided to reject the lawsuit filed by the plaintiff and his mother, and ordered to grant the grandmother the custody of the boy. The court also ordered the plaintiff to bear the court expenses and lawyer fees.”