European court: EU rules don't cover Sharia law divorces


Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: Less than a minute

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

BERLIN (AP) — The European Union's top court ruled Wednesday that the bloc's divorce regulations don't cover private agreements, throwing a case back to a Munich court to decide whether to recognize a divorce granted under religious Sharia law to a couple who are both Syrian-German.

Raja Mamisch and Soha Sahyouni, who married in Syria and live in Germany, had been granted a divorce in 2013 in Syria in an Islamic Sharia law proceeding. The case came to Europe when Mamisch applied to have the divorce recognized in Germany and the Munich state court ruled the EU's "Rome III" regulation applied and granted his application.

But Sahyouni appealed to the Munich court, which asked for the European Court of Justice's opinion, which in turn ruled that Rome III doesn't apply to such "private" divorces.

The court sent the case back to Munich, saying it needs to decide under national law.

The Munich court said it could not comment on what might happen next in the case until it receives the full European Court of Justice decision.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Most recent World stories

Related topics

World
The Associated Press

    STAY IN THE KNOW

    Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast