Problems in our marital framework-a legal perspective

  

Date Posted: 12/19/2012 6:44:45 AM

Posted By: Macawear88  Membership Level: Silver  Total Points: 163

---

In Kenya, we have different types of marriages which are governed by different legal frameworks. As a result, some injustices are likely to occur due to different legal frameworks that are to be used to determine issues. The Marriage Bill, 2012 is a successor of the Marriage Bill 2007. The new laws seeks to harmonize different types of marriages and make it easier to solve legal issues surrounding marital disputes. This resource seeks to give a cursory analysis of the challenges and problems within the current laws.

The first problem is the application of borrowed laws in our jurisprudence. Kenya is almost fifty years old now. Some marriage laws which were enacted during colonialism are still in force. They are not in parity with the changing dynamics of the society and are therefore redundant. Further, the old laws stated that a woman was mostly part of a man. This imposed a responsibility on the man to provide for the woman. There is a paradigm shift currently where a woman is considered to be equal to a man.

The Married Women Property Act, enacted in 1882 is a very old piece of legislation. It becomes difficult to apply the rulings made in 1882 to a dispute in 2012. The application of the Act, in the wake of the new constitution is a bit challenging. There is need to speed up the process of revising and possibly overhauling the whole system of marital laws in Kenya.

Another problem that arises is changing one system of law to another. There is a collision where marriage parties are of different religions. It becomes difficult since we do not know which law should be used. What if a woman got married to a Muslim under Islamic law and later converted to Christianity and is still living with

her husband. Such challenges are not dealt with under the Marriage laws. It creates legal issues.

In concluding, it is quite obvious that there is need for reform in our system. This calls for enactment of new family laws and repealing of archaic family laws.

---

Next: If only we were modest
Previous: How to mollify an emotionally fragile person