FOR many women, leaving a marriage is not simply a decision to walk away from a relationship. It can mean leaving behind a home, financial security, social standing and years of unpaid work. For some, it can also mean entering a legal system in which the price of leaving depends on how their decision to leave is understood.
A woman who seeks to end her marriage because of cruelty by her husband is not necessarily asking for a favour. Instead, she is exercising a right given to her by law. Yet for years, the distinction between a wife’s different legal routes out of marriage has had very real consequences, particularly for her dower and other financial rights.
Recent developments in our family law jurisprudence suggest that courts are beginning to ask a more important question: should a woman have to pay an economic price simply because she has chosen to leave a marriage that has become unbearable? The answer, increasingly, is no.
The distinction between khula and dissolution under the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939, is central to this discussion. Khula is a woman’s right to seek release from a marriage without alleging fault on her husband’s part. Dissolution under the Act, however, is based on specified grounds such as cruelty, failure to maintain her, or a husband’s unlawful second marriage. The difference is not merely technical. It can affect a woman’s dower. Where a statutory ground is proved, her dower is protected. Khula is a separate remedy, and confusing the two can have serious consequences for a woman’s financial rights. The Lahore High Court clarified that a woman who proves a statutory ground for dissolution, such as cruelty, should not be made to forfeit her dower.
Recent jurisprudence points towards a more balanced understanding of marriage, one in which a woman does not surrender her autonomy.
The Supreme Court recently held that cruelty may be physical, mental or emotional, and must be assessed by its effect on the woman and her ability to continue the marriage with dignity and security.
This is significant because domestic abuse rarely happens in a courtroom-friendly manner. There may be no photograph. No medical certificate. No FIR. No independent witness. As these are civil proceedings, the standard is the balance of probabilities, and a woman’s testimony must be assessed alongside the surrounding circumstances rather than rejected for lack of documentary proof.
The language used to describe women can itself shape the legal question. Terms such as ‘disobedient’ and ‘nashiza’can shift attention from the husband’s conduct to the woman’s character. That is precisely the kind of thinking the law should move away from. But the financial question does not begin when a woman files for dissolution. It begins much earlier, during the marriage itself. A landmark judgement by Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani brings another part of this problem into view: the economic contribution of women within marriage.
The judgement examined the question of matrimonial property and recognised that domestic labour, childcare and other non-financial contributions can play a role in the acquisition and preservation of family wealth. It also highlighted the limits of the existing legal framework in Pakistan, where marriage itself does not automatically create an interest for a wife in property acquired in her husband’s name.
If a woman leaves a marriage after 20 years, what happens to the economic value of the years she spent building that household? Our law has traditionally been better at identifying the money a husband earned than the work that made that earning possible. The court therefore suggested legislative reform to recognise matrimonial property and homemakers’ contributions, including through arrangements recorded in the nikahnama.
The economic vulnerability of women does not disappear when a marriage ends through death. In a separate judgement, the Islamabad High Court considered a widow’s right to recover deferred dower from her deceased husband’s estate. The court treated unpaid dower as a debt and held that it must be dealt with before the estate is distributed among the heirs. It also considered whether limitation could extinguish this substantive matrimonial right. The judgement raises a broader point about access to justice. A procedural rule should not become a means of destroying a substantive right.
These cases therefore tell a larger story. They show a legal system beginning to recognise that a woman’s relationship with marriage cannot be reduced to whether she remains in it. She has rights while she is married. She has rights when she seeks to leave. And she continues to have rights after the marriage has ended. The real challenge is ensuring that those rights are not lost through assumptions about what a ‘good wife’ should look like.
The recent jurisprudence points towards a more balanced understanding of marriage, one in which a woman does not surrender her autonomy when she enters into a nikah. That principle should extend beyond the courtroom. It should inform legislation, the drafting of nikahnamas, family court practice and legal education.
Leaving a marriage may already carry an emotional and social cost. The law should not add an unnecessary economic one. A woman who leaves because a marriage has become unsafe, intolerable or legally untenable should not have to purchase her freedom by surrendering rights that the law has already given her. That is the real price we should be trying to eliminate.
The writer is a lawyer and former judicial law clerk at the Islamabad High Court, with an interest in women’s rights, family law and access to justice.
Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2026
