Thousands of parents are demanding changes to the parental visiting rights law now that Suzanne Mubarak has left the political arena, reports Reem Leila The fall of former president Hosni Mubarak has also meant the disappearance of his family from the political arena, including his wife Suzanne Mubarak, and this in turn has had effects on laws associated with the former first lady. One such law is the controversial visiting rights law, which is alleged to give divorced women too much control over their children at the expense of their former husbands. Parents have been stirring public opinion up against the visiting rights law, which, they say, damages their relationships with their children. The law, first issued in 1929, gives visiting rights of three hours a week to non-custodial parents. It became controversial when mothers were given custody of children until the age of 15 in 2008 in a move associated with Suzanne Mubarak. If parents are able to reach agreement on visiting rights up until the age of 15, then the law presents few problems. However, if not, then it is usually the fathers who find themselves in court demanding additional visiting rights to see their children. Under the law, parental visits, supervised by a court-appointed official, take place in a public place for three hours a week, such as sporting clubs, libraries or public parks. However, the children's fathers, mostly the non-custodial parents, argue that these visits are conducted in a hostile atmosphere and that they cannot bond with their child as a result. There are currently some seven million children belonging to divorced parents in Egypt, some 30 per cent of the total. Many non- custodial parents are demanding that the law be changed to increase the duration of visits and to allow them to take their children home with them for at least two days if both parents live in the same city and three days if one of the parents lives in another governorate. The demands for change have been fiercely resisted by the custodial parents, who counter that non-custodial fathers, who sometimes do not support their children financially, may take advantage of additional visiting rights to wean children away from their mothers. Some might even go so far as to kidnap the children, custodial parents allege. Hossam El-Shanshouri, founder of the Egyptian Organisation for the Children of Divorced Parents, formed in 2008, said that the visiting rights law, as well as other laws associated with former first lady Suzanne Mubarak, should be changed. "The laws have increased divorce rates in Egypt, leading to broken homes and harmed children," El-Shanshouri, a divorced parent of two children, said. "Increasing the age of custody to benefit mothers has been a disaster," he said, adding that children must grow up under the equal supervision of both parents. However, according to Farkhonda Hassan, former secretary-general of the National Council for Women (NCW), previously headed by Suzanne Mubarak, the law regulating visiting rights was issued in 1929 and amended in 1976, years before the former president came to power. "Dubbing the law 'Suzanne's law' is nonsense," she said. "It has nothing to do with Mrs Mubarak." Mustafa Ismail, a divorced non-custodial parent of a son, said that the current law also deprives paternal grandparents, or the extended family of the non-custodial parent, of seeing their grandchildren. The family of the non- custodial parent has no rights at all, he said, which damages family ties. "Why can't his grandparents and relatives see my son," Ismail demanded. "The non- custodial parent should be able to take his child home so he can get to know his relatives better, including his grandparents and uncles, in order that he will be loved by them as well." Custodial parents, usually divorced mothers, disagree with critics of the law, claiming that fathers do not really want to host their children, only claiming that they do in order to annoy their ex-wives. Rasha Magdi, mother of a 12-year-old son of whom she has custody, said that "my ex- husband has remarried. He meets our son every Friday at the club, and he insists on bringing his wife with him. I discovered that he has been trying to convince our son that this other woman is our son's mother and not me." "My son has got confused as a result, and now he has started to ask me whether I am really his mother, which is extremely upsetting." Rania Moussa, a 38-year-old mother of two children, also opposes demands by non- custodial fathers to increase visiting hours and to gain the right to host their children. Many fathers do not financially support their children, do not ask about them, do not call them, do not visit them, and do not encourage members of their extended family to ask about the children, she said. They go to court to demand additional visiting rights to irritate their ex-wives, Moussa said, adding that "I used to beg my ex-husband to visit his children, but he does not even bother to answer my phone calls." Fathers who neglect their children should not be allowed to visit them, she said. Any father demanding the right to visit his children should meet his financial and other duties first. Nevertheless, fathers are also demanding that the regulation that gives them custody of children only if this has not been first granted to the mother also be reviewed. At the moment, the mother takes precedence, and the father is at the bottom of the list after the mother, grandmother, maternal grandmother, maternal aunt and paternal aunt, something which is in line with Islamic Sharia law, according to Abdel-Moeti Bayoumi, a member of the Islamic Research Centre (IRC) in Cairo. Changes in the way grandparents are allowed to visit their grandchildren, regardless of the presence or absence of the non-custodial parent, could be considered, he said. Bayoumi said that non-custodial fathers' demands to host their children were not supported by Sharia law. "The proposed hosting policy is not in line with the regulations of Islamic Sharia. According to Islam, a child is to stay with his mother until the end of the age of custody and then be moved to live with his father," Bayoumi explained. According to Fawzia Abdel-Sattar, a professor of law at Cairo University, there are currently some 1,600 cases before the courts disputing visiting rights. Many of these show women and children suffering as a result of fathers' failure to fulfil their duties to provide emotional and financial support to their children, she said. Abdel-Sattar said that many fathers do not show up during visiting hours, and there have been allegations of non-custodial parents attempting to kidnap children in them. "Children come out of such incidents in fear of their fathers, because they suffer as a result and they have to witness the anguish of their mothers," Abdel-Sattar said. She said that paternal grandparents were allowed to visit their grandchildren in cases where the father was either dead or was abroad. This law could be changed to provide guarantees that children would be returned after such visits, as there had been cases of the extended family attempting to kidnap children, she said. "Parents who abduct children should face one year's imprisonment and a LE50,000 fine, as well as being deprived of visiting rights. As it is, they only face a month in jail and a fine of LE1,000," she said. Ibrahim Nada, the founder of the Egyptian Divorced Mothers Organisation, is the father of a divorced daughter, and he believes that the demands of non-custodial parents should not be met. A draft law before the People's Assembly prior to the 25 January Revolution, had stipulated that a non-custodial parent should be allowed to host his children for a specific period of time from the age of 10 onwards, forbidden under the present law, as long as the consent of both the custodial parent and the child had been given, Nada said, and grandparents would also be given the right to see their grandchildren. According to Islamic Sharia, the father is responsible for supporting his children. However, in cases where the father is not able to do so, this duty falls on paternal uncles and the paternal grandfather. Under the draft law, in cases where the father or his male relatives did not support the child, visiting rights would be denied until the father met his financial and other obligations. "The IRC and Al-Azhar will soon give an opinion on the new draft law. If they approve it, it would be wrong to see it as a development of 'Suzanne's law,' since it would have the approval of the IRC and Al-Azhar," Nada said.
