Legal and Practical Aspects of Divorce, Compensation and Liquidation of Pecuniary Relation between Spouses: A Case Study in SNNPRS Courts

Abstract

Family is the natural and fundamental unit of a society. Marriage is one of the essential ways to form a family and it is usually concluded with the assumption that it will last a lifetime. However, in reality, many marital relations end up with divorce. The legal process of divorce, at a minimum, involves filing of petition and making financial arrangements. This article examines the practices of courts regarding divorce, compensation and liquidation of property with specific reference to courts in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Regional State (SNNPRS) of Ethiopia. To this end, a qualitative research approach has been undertaken using case review, observation, and literature and legislative reviews methods. The overall tendency observed in the courts is that the rules governing divorce, liquidation of property and determination of compensation are not consistently applied. Most of the courts have developed their own definition of what constitutes fault and how they assess the amount of compensation. There is a wrong association between faults and modes of compensation and inconsistency in assessing the extent of the damage and its equivalent compensation that ranges from 52% to 66% of the common property for the same kind of fault. Such variations also existed in the process of liquidation of property. There are problems in identifying a personal and common property. In one case, the court makes the income obtained during the marriage a personal property, and in another case, the court decided a property, which is given to one of the spouses by donation as a common property of the spouses. In a few cases, the court decided that property, which belongs to a third party, as the common property of the spouses. In a different case, the court pends division of common property arguing thasuch properties are useful for the upbringing of children. Most decisions of the courts lack precision, which in turn expose the spouses for further litigation.