New family law balancing tradition and women’s rights, debate …

If you’re married in Kuwait, planning to marry, or raising children here, the Personal Status Law is the law that shapes your daily life more than almost any other. It decides how marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance work for you and your family. Right now, a reform of this law is being discussed, and a Kuwaiti lawyer has set out a strong case for why it needs to change with the times.

Bibi Ahmad Alsunni, a Kuwaiti lawyer writing in Times Kuwait, says Kuwaiti society has changed a lot. Women now work, study, lead and build careers in ways earlier generations didn’t. Her argument is simple: the law regulating families should reflect that reality, not an older picture of family life.

Why is this law being reviewed now?

According to the article, the Personal Status Law was written for a different time. Kuwaiti women today are active in employment, education, research and leadership, roles the law doesn’t always reflect. The writer says legislation isn’t just a fixed set of rules; it’s a tool meant to manage relationships, protect rights and deliver justice. If society moves forward but the law doesn’t, the law stops doing its job properly.

She raises a direct legal question: do the proposed provisions in the new law actually reflect these social changes, and do they create real balance between what husbands and wives owe each other? Her answer, in short, is that some proposed approaches still lean on older ideas about family roles that don’t match how educated, working Kuwaiti women live now.

What should marriage look like under the new law?

The piece argues marriage shouldn’t be built around one spouse having authority over the other, or limiting either partner’s freedom. Instead, it should rest on affection, cooperation and shared responsibility between both sides. She describes marriage as a legal and human relationship, not one of subordination.

She backs this up with religious reasoning too, not just social argument. She points out that Islam historically recognised women’s independent financial rights, their right to own and dispose of property, and their rights around dowry and inheritance. She quotes two verses from the Quran: