My husband said he would provide for my children but now he’s trying to get out of it

QI am an Asian expatriate and have signed a contract with my husband saying he has to give me custody of my children and provide us with Dh7,000 a month in support. He paid for two years and then stopped. When I confronted him he said he would raise an objection in court. Later, when I filed an execution to enforce the agreement, he raised an objection called Ishqaal. One of my friends told me Ishqaal will stop my proceeding until it is decided. Is this true? What can I do to protect myself? Can he keep prolonging my case and not pay? A

It is very unfortunate that your husband is trying to escape from his legal commitment. In any other cases, filing Ishqaal in the execution may suspend the proceeding till the Ishqaal is decided. But the law – Article 11 of the UAE Personal Status Law 28 of 2005 – is very specific for cases such as yours where an agreement has been signed by both parties. The law indicates that Ishqaal against the alimony and custody settlement shall not suspend or freeze the proceeding, which means that even if your husband did Ishqaal he would still be obliged to pay you.

I am a European expatriate living in Dubai and married to an Asian woman. She filed a divorce case against me claiming that I had insulted her. Yet neither she nor the witness could say what the insulting words I am accused of using were. The main argument of mine and my legal defence was to ask what the exact insulting words were since she may have considered them personally insulting when they technically were not. Yet the court adopted her point of view and gave her the divorce. Do I have the right to appeal against this judgment? And on what grounds?

Although your case is not precisely clarified in UAE Personal Status Law, it has happened before – such as case 26/2002 in the Supreme Court of Dubai. In that case the Supreme Court indicated that the First Instance Court had to indicate precisely what the words in question were to enable the court to confirm whether or not they were defamatory. So you may depend on this in your next appeal.

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