Padang Religious Court Decision No. 563 of 2014: Irrevocable Divorce Granted

The parties were married on 22 June 2012, but, for the duration of their short marriage, had never lived together as husband and wife. Work commitments meant that the defendant lived on a plantation in Riau, while the plaintiff lived at her parents' home in Padang. The plaintiff submitted that the parties' marriage had been disharmonious from the outset, the defendant showing a general lack of concern for the plaintiff as a husband should for his wife. For instance, three days after their marriage, the defendant left for Riau without taking the plaintiff because he supposedly did not yet have a house there. When the defendant returned to the plaintiff's parents' home for Eid al'Fitr (Idul Fitri) in 2012, he refused to be physically intimate with the plaintiff, and, at the end of January 2013, when the plaintiff visited the defendant, they were only physically intimate twice in one month.

After refusing to be physically intimate with the plaintiff again, the plaintiff returned home to Padang in April 2013, and since May 2013, the defendant had provided the plaintiff with no financial support. Despite the efforts of the plaintiff's parents to intervene and resolve the parties' problems, on 7 August 2013, the defendant effectively handed the plaintiff over to her parents without any legitimate reason. Since then communication between the parties had been severed and they had remained separated for approximately 10 months, leading up to the proceeding.

The court found that the parties' differences were irreconcilable, and, pursuant to art 39(2) of Law No. 1 of 1974 on Marriage, in conjunction with art 19(f) of Government Regulation No. 9 of 1975, and art 116(f) of the Compilation of Islamic Laws, believed ongoing conflict between the parties constituted sufficient grounds to grant the plaintiff an irrevocable divorce (talak satu ba'in sughra).

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