Morocco to Tighten Polygamy Laws, Curb Fraudulent Practices

The Minister of Justice wants to sound the death knell for fraudulent practices. During the discussion of the sectoral budget of his ministry before the Justice, Legislation and Human Rights Committee in the House of Representatives, Abdellatif Ouahbi indicated that new restrictions would be imposed in the procedure for granting polygamy authorization, after the digitization of the family situation of citizens, reports the Arabic-language daily Al Ahdath Al Maghribia. This digitization will involve the launch at the end of next December of a digital platform. The latter will make it possible to monitor, with precision, the cases of marriages and divorces from the date of the request for polygamy authorization until the death of the person concerned, in order to avoid any fraudulent practice on the one hand, and to fight against the phenomenon of circumvention of the law and to protect the rights of children and women, on the other hand.

"Sometimes, we discover after the death of the husband that he was married to several women without them knowing about it. It is to avoid such situations that are detrimental to the rightful claimants that we have decided to tighten the conditions for granting the remarriage authorization when the person concerned applies for it for the second time," said the minister, stressing that "the granting of the polygamy authorization would only be valid once, because if the applicant claims another one, he will have to start the process from the beginning." "He will therefore have to appear before the judge who will submit him to a special procedure to know the reasons for his request and to know if he is married or divorced. This restriction aims to put an end to the phenomenon of the fraudulent use of the polygamy authorization."