Case Update (23 July 2024): In re Marriage of Sabir; Texas court declines to recognize Pakistani divorce decree
The parties married in Pakistan in 2009, and later moved to Texas. On May 20, 2021, the Husband filed for divorce in Texas. The Wife counter-claimed. Both parties had alleged that they were domiciliaries of Texas for the preceding 6-months before filing. On January 24, 2022, the Husband sought registration of a foreign divorce decree from Pakistan, and dismissal of the Texas divorce filing. He claimed that, on January 1, 2022, the Union Council in Lahore, Pakistan divorced the parties. The certificate he attached to his Texas court filing listed addresses in Lahore for both parties (which the Wife claimed were never their addresses), and included the following dates: (1) September 20, 2021 as a “Date of Notice for Divorce”, (2) September 25, 2021 as the “Entry Date”, (3) December 25, 2021 as a “Date of Failure of Conciliation, (4) December 25, 2021 as a “Date of Effectiveness of Divorce”, and (5) January 1, 2022 as the “Issue Date.” The Husband asked the Texas court to subsequently divide their assets and address custody of their children, which was not done in Pakistan.
The Texas court was being asked to determine whether, as a matter of comity, it should recognize the Pakistani divorce. Comity is not a requirement, and is a matter of discretion. The court, in determining whether to recognize the divorce decree, looked as to whether the Wife had sufficient notice so as to satisfy minimum due process. Apparently on September 18, 2021, the Wife received a text from the Husband stating “to fulfill religious obligation, I have pronounced verbal divorce today.” She apparently stated that this text was to verbally declare divorce in accordance with their religion, and that she did not receive any further notice until January 2022, when she received an email with an attachment that the Husband claimed to be their Pakistani Certificate of Divorce. She stated that this “was the first time that I had ever been made aware that Pakistan might be involved in our divorce.”
