RIYADH: Saudi Arabia will allow divorced women to apply for family identity cards for themselves and their sons on their own at the Civil Status Department, reported Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper Saturday. Muhammad Al-Jaser, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior's Civil Status Department, said a divorcee will have the right to have an identification document issued for her and her children when she applies and presents the divorce document. If the former husband failed to remove the divorced woman from his family card then the woman can remove herself through a divorce document attested by a court. Al-Jaser also revealed the government intends to allow a man with more than one wife to have an individual family card for each one. Each record or family card will contain the information of one wife and her children. This measure has been repeatedly called for by many people. These steps comes in the wake of courts having to deal with many cases of financial and civil disputes, filed by divorced women, because their former husbands failed to change their civil status information. A woman official of the Saudi Hollandi Bank, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said a number of women have been victims to fraud by their former husbands who, after the divorce, used the family card to buy goods or apply for loans under the former wife's name. The issue of the husband keeping all the documents of the divorced wife and her sons – family record, passport and birth certificate for example – is considered the biggest problem facing divorced women. Ahmad Al-Muhaimeed, legal consultant, attributed this to some traditions, which he says are not part of Islamic law. This results in a divorced woman facing difficulties getting her documents unless her former husband shows her some “generosity”.
