by Matthew Hay Brown
Maryland's highest court has rejected a Pakastani man's attempt to invoke talaq, the Islamic divorce that enables a man to dissolve his marriage by telling his wife "I divorce thee" three times.
Farah Aleem already had filed for divorce in Montgomery County Circuit Court in 2003 when her husband went to the Pakstiani Embassy in Washington to invoke the talaq.
By doing so, World Bank economist Irfan Aleem argued, he ended the marriage and did not owe his wife a share of his assets, valued at $2 million.
The state Court of Appeals disagreed.
"If we were to affirm the use of talaq, controlled as it is by the husband, a wife, a resident of this state, would never be able to consummate a divorce action filed by her in which she seeks a division of marital property," the judges ruled.
The talaq, they wrote, "directly deprives the wife of the due process she is entitled to when she initiates divorce litigation."
Nick Madigan of The Baltimore Sun has the rest of the story, after the jump.
