MK Family Law

On February 4, 2021, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, in the unreported opinion of Chaudry v. Chaudry , affirmed that a mehr signed by the parties at the time of their marriage was not an enforceable contract.   The parties married in an Islamic marriage ceremony in 2004 in Virginia.  At the time, the parties signed a mehr .  After a tumultuous marriage, in 2018, the Wife filed a Complaint for Absolute Divorce.  The Husband countered.  At the conclusion of the trial, the court, among other things, ordered the Husband to pay the Wife a marital award in excess of $279,000.  The Husband contends that the trial judge should have enforced the provisions in the mehr , which he says would have required him to pay to his Wife the sum of $10,000 in lieu of equitably dividing their marital property.   The Maryland courts addressed the issue of a mehr in 2020 in the Nouri case .  The Nouri court elaborated on the basic understanding of a me...

In a March 2, 2020 opinion by the Supreme Court in New York County in Federbush v. Shah (2020 NY Slip Op 50300(U)), the court addressed a multi-jurisdictional divorce suit between a couple that had married in Thailand 8 years earlier.  The couple had signed a prenuptial agreement on the same date as their wedding, which divided property by title, and Wife gave birth to a child about 2 months later.  The family lived in Thailand until mid-2017 when they then relocated to NY.  While Husband is American, the Wife’s nationality presented problems for her remaining in the United States for more than a set number of days at a time.  Approximately 1 year after their arrival in NY, the parties separated while vacationing in Thailand.  The family was embroiled in 3 separate court cases.  Wife filed a Hague return petition in NY that was denied, finding that NY had become the child’s habitual residence by agreement of his parents.  Before this decision was...

Maryland's Court of Special Appeals (its intermediate appellate court) issued an opinion on April 7, 2020 that addressed the issue of the enforceability of Islamic marriage contracts in two separate, yet consolidated, cases. Nouri v. Dadgar  and Ghazirad v. Mojarrad set forth the premise that mahr ( a provision in an Islamic marriage contract for a husband to pay a wife a sum of money ) is not per se unenforceable.  In fact, if the contract can be interpreted based on neutral contract principles, and does not touch upon ecclesiastical law, the court can address the contract's enforceability.  The court, however, went a step farther and set a higher standard for these particular marriage contracts because they are entered into between two individuals in a confidential relationship.  On that basis, the enforceability of the contract should involve a more stringent standard such as that which would apply in the situation of a premarital agreement and look to whether ...