Saudi judge allows women to divorce husbands who smoke

The judge said that should the women have health issues because of their husbands’ smoking habits, they could file cases against them and the “legal rules applied in these cases could reach the stage of divorce.”

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“If a woman married a man and then found out that he is a smoker, and she mentioned in her case that she had, as a result of his smoking, a health issue in the chest and severe allergy, after stating that she didn’t want in the first place to marry a smoker because she considered it a fault in the man, their marriage should be ended because of the harm smoking causes and the inability of the couple to continue their life together,” the Gulf News quoted the judge, as saying.

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However, he excluded the cases of those women who were aware of their husband’s smoking prior to finalising their marriage contract, while the duration of marriage is another factor that will be to take into consideration.

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According to official figures, there are nearly 6 million smokers in Saudi Arabia, including 600,000 women, and 772,000 teenagers, including intermediate and secondary school students, while the country is the fourth largest importer of cigarettes in the world.

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