JEDDAH — The Personal Status Court in Jeddah has ordered a Saudi man to divorce his 40-year-old wife after it was shown that he had been chatting with another woman on the social media platform Snapchat and had physically assaulted his wife with a sharp object. The wife sought the annulment of their marriage as a result of her husband's affair with her female friend. The woman discovered the relationship by accident when the couple was on a holiday and she saw a message on Snapchat on her husband's phone from her close friend. "When she opened the message, she found the communication between her friend and her husband," a legal source familiar with the case said. When the woman confronted her husband with the messages, he said that he intended to marry her friend, causing the wife to seek a divorce. At one point, according to the source, the woman returned home to find her husband and her friend together in bed and a fight broke out between the couple. "The woman threatened to expose the details of the affair and that is when the husband hit her with a sharp object and she lost consciousness," the source said. Security officers questioned the woman at King Fahd Hospital and she was issued a medical report detailing her health condition and the treatment that she needed for 15 days. "Then security authorities arrested the husband who signed a consent form not to hurt her again and then was released. He refused his wife's request for a divorce. The wife was then forced to file a lawsuit against him in the family court demanding the annulment of the marriage," the source said. "The court considered the issue in several sessions and issued a legal provision to annul the marriage, and also ordered the husband to pay for the children's expenses."
