Family and Personal Status: Confessional Law in Practice
Personal status in Lebanon is confessional: each recognised community applies its own law through its own courts. The exam tests marriage, its effects, dissolution, custody and inheritance inside that structure.
Marriage and its effects
- Consent of both spouses, legal capacity, publication and registration; the minimum age and the judge's role differ between communities.
- Civil marriage is not celebrated in Lebanon; a civil marriage validly concluded abroad may be registered under the applicable rules.
- Mutual duties: cohabitation, fidelity and maintenance (nafaqa), which is distinct from custody.
Dissolution, custody and inheritance
- Divorce may be judicial, by mutual consent, or in some communities unilateral; the court applies the spouses' communal law.
- Custody (hadana) is decided by reference to the child's interest; guardianship over property is a separate concept, usually vested in the father.
- Inheritance: forced heirs with fixed shares, residuaries (ta'sib), and bequests limited in Islamic law to one third; a 1959 statute governs non-Muslim wills.
Worked example
A Sunni husband pronounces talaq and stops paying. The wife sues in the Sunni court for nafaqa and custody of two children. The court applies Hanafi rules: maintenance is due for the waiting period and for the children's needs, and custody goes to the mother while the father retains guardianship.
Traps
Assuming one civil code governs all Lebanese; importing civil-law custody notions into a religious court; confusing custody with guardianship; treating a foreign status judgment as effective without recognition.