Rights advocates, lawmakers criticize Egypt's personal status bill over custody, alimony

Rights advocates and lawmakers sharply criticized Egypt’s newly referred personal status bill, warning that several provisions on custody, visitation, alimony, and paternity risk undermining family stability and the best interests of children.

The government sent the draft to the House of Representatives on May 4, following President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s directive to fast-track legislation. Critics say the bill lacks a coherent philosophy and contains contradictions between legal and Sharia principles.

At a seminar organized by the Constitution party in downtown Cairo, speakers including party president Wafaa Sabry, Senator Amira Saber, rights lawyer Tarek Elawady, women’s rights advocate Iman Bibars, and New Woman Foundation executive director Nevine Ebeid raised concerns over the bill’s drafting and enforcement mechanisms.

Elawady criticized several articles in the bill, saying some suffered from drafting flaws that could open the door to inconsistent judicial interpretations, especially articles related to establishing paternity and pregnancy periods.

Speaking to Al Manassa, Elawady said the bill contained “legal and Sharia-based contradictions,” adding that Article 98 created problems around the minimum threshold for establishing paternity. “If a child is born one day before six months, he cannot be attributed to the father,” he noted. “But if he is born one day later, he is suddenly his son?”

Elawady predicted that the bill would not pass in its current form, saying its rushed introduction had left multiple provisions poorly thought through. “Which judge has time to open all these investigations?” he asked.

In his remarks during the seminar, Elawady said the bill lacked a “clear philosophy” serving the best interests of the child. The primary objective of any personal status legislation should be to preserve family stability, not “manage conflict” after separation, he added.

Alimony disputes and proving real income

Regarding alimony, Elawady noted that current estimates failed to take into account actual living costs, especially given the difficulty of proving a spouse’s true income. He explained that women would often be awarded “1,000 Egyptian pounds a month (about $19), which amounts to roughly 30 pounds a day,” pointing out that declared income does not always reflect actual spending power. 

To accurately determine alimony, he suggested that electronic wallet transfer records and transaction histories could help courts establish more accurate income figures and set fairer payments.

Iman Bibars criticized the absence of clear mechanisms for  child handovers during visitation, warning that this deficiency could generate new disputes. “Someone could simply say they never received the child,” she warned.

She added that many parents who hold custody or visitation orders cannot enforce them in practice and expressed reservations about the bill’s visitation provisions. Shared custody systems in other countries function alongside dedicated child protection agencies that regularly monitor children’s well-being, she added.

“Women are terrified of this law,” Bibars said, attributing much of that fear to the lack of clarity around enforcement and oversight mechanisms.

A “Western” model

Wafaa Sabry said some provisions reflected models closer to “Western frameworks” for managing family relations after separation, noting that the structure of Egyptian families differed markedly from the contexts in which those models were developed.

She also criticized the polarization surrounding the bill’s debate, saying, “Social media had amplified fears and fueled mutual recriminations.”

Senator Amira Saber said public discussion had devolved into “a fight between two sides,” rather than a serious engagement with legislation governing the family and children.

She called for a legislative impact study before the bill is approved, warning that some laws are passed under political pressure. “I hope a serious study takes no less than a year,” she added.

Speaking to Al Manassa, Saber also criticized a separate personal status bill submitted by the Homeland Defenders Party, particularly a provision that would lower the legal marriage age to 16. She said codifying marriage under the age of 18 “opens a dangerous door to exceptions.”

She noted that children born of undocumented or underage marriages often struggle to obtain official documents and basic services, stressing her rejection of legalizing early marriage.

She called for legal mechanisms to protect such children while stiffening penalties for those involved in early marriages. “There must be a measure that does not harm the child, but punishes the perpetrators,” she said.

Endless legal proceedings

Nevine Ebeid said part of the litigation crisis in personal status cases stemmed from the absence of a unified and speedy mechanism to deal with family disputes, leaving litigants to face long and complex legal tracks.

She added that women bore the largest share of childcare and unpaid labor, noting that a significant proportion of Egyptian households are headed by women, many of whom work in the informal sector, outside formal social protection frameworks.

Regarding custody arrangements, Sabry described placing the father second in the custody order as “Western thinking,” while Bibars called for a revised order placing the mother first, then the maternal grandmother, then the paternal grandmother, with the father coming after.

Elawady, by contrast, criticized the move toward unified rules applied to all family cases, saying, “A general rule cannot apply to everyone.” He called for giving judges broader discretionary authority according to the circumstances of each family.