Blitar Religious Court Determination No. 18 of 2015: Marriage Dispensation

The applicant (30 years) had been with her fiance (27 years) for five months, and both their parents were aware of their relationship. The applicant's fiance's initial marriage proposal to the applicant, however, had been forbidden by the applicant's father (and marriage guardian) because the applicant's fiance was from the neighbouring village, which the local Javanese culture deemed incompatible.

Despite the applicant's pleas to her father to allow her to marry her fiance, the applicant's father had remained steadfast in his convictions. Seeing no legal justification in her father's refusal, the applicant sought a stipulation from the court permitting her to marry her fiance on the following grounds:

  1. that the applicant was prepared and ready to become a wife, as was her fiance to become a husband, as well as already being gainfully employed;
  2. that nothing under Islamic law or any current legislative instrument precluded the applicant and her fiance from marrying; and
  3. that the applicant was concerned that if she and her fiance were not permitted to marry, they would contravene Islamic legal provisions (read: become physically intimate).

The court acceded to the applicant's wishes, agreeing with the applicant that none of the reasons the applicant's father proffered in forbidding the marriage accorded with any of the reasons contained in arts 8-10 of Law No. 1 of 1974 on Marriage, in conjunction with arts 39-44 of the Compilation of Islamic Laws.

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