OPTIMISM is growing about the part played by family dispute settlement offices in saving marriages. These offices, attached to the family courts, have managed to persuade about 80 per cent of couples wanting a divorce to patch up their domestic grievances and walk home hand-inhand again. A team of qualified social workers, led by trained judges, was first deployed in 2004 in 238 family courts in different cities, after the mainstream civil courts showed signs of collapsing under the huge backlog of divorce and child custody cases, which often get stuck in the courts for many years. The family courts were launched parallel to the approval of khula (No-fault divorce) for women. The Khula, crucial for women battling to break away from their husbands, is said to be Egyptian women's greatest breakthrough in their decades-long campaign to end male prejudice in Egypt's society. According to the Khula Law, the couple must visit the Family Court before the wife is allowed to pursue her divorce battle. It only takes two weeks to decide whether the woman goes through with the divorce or accepts the arbitrator's advice. Prior to this law, estranged wives would battle for years in mainstream courtrooms to try and get a divorce. The lawyers for their stubborn husbands would exploit the ambiguity of legal terms to humiliate and psychologically and financially ruin the divorceseeker. Sitting before the arbitrator, the couple should lay bare the full extent of their grievances against each other. The role of the arbitrators in family disputes was acknowledged by Chief Justice Wassim Sewelim, head of the technical bureau of the General Administration of Family Dispute Settlement Offices. He optimistically observed that the arbitrators also help settle child custody disputes and other domestic problems, which take their toll on the couples and their children. About 35 per cent of family cases submitted to the Family Court have been peacefully settled with the help of arbitrators,” the Chief Justice says. “But it's always harder if one or other of the couple refuses to turn up and instead sends his/her lawyer to sit at the table with his/her spouse and the arbitrator.” Meanwhile, a senior sociologist insists that a pre-marriage counselling service would help couples work through their problems before they tie the knot. Professor Azza Karim of the National Centre for Sociological and Criminological Research, attributes the problems that arise to the couple's cultural and social backgrounds and childhood experiences. “When they get married, many couples neglect the importance of thinking about the kind of future they're going to create for their children,” she adds.
