SHARIAsource

By Muhammad Zubair Abbasi

The Personal Status Law of 2022 (PSL) forms part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 reform agenda.[1] The PSL codifies legal rules governing family relations, including marriage, divorce, child custody, maintenance, gifts, wills, and inheritance. While drawing extensively on principles derived from classical fiqh, the PSL introduces substantive reforms by codifying, clarifying, and standardizing rules that were previously applied through judicial discretion.

The law sets the minimum age of marriage at eighteen, while permitting courts to authorize the marriage of individuals under eighteen where they are deemed sufficiently mature to provide consent.[2] It further enhances women’s autonomy in marriage by limiting the traditional authority of the guardian: a judge may intervene to permit a woman to marry a man of her choice where the guardian’s objection is deemed unreasonable.[3] The PSL strengthens women’s rights within marriage by invalidating the practice of instant divorce (triple ṭalāq)[4] and broadening women’s access to no-fault dissolution through a judicially supervised reconciliation process.[5] It also reinforces married women’s financial rights by requiring husbands to provide maintenance irrespective of the wife’s financial standing.[6] In addition, the financial burden associated with wife-initiated no-fault divorce (khulʿ) is curtailed by limiting the compensation payable to the husband to prompt dower.[7]

Notes:

[1] “Vision 2030,” Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, accessed March 16, 2026, https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/media/cofh1nmf/vision-2030-overview.pdf.

[2] Personal Status Law of 2022 [PSL] art. 9 (Saudi Arabia).

[3] PSL art. 20.

[4] PSL art. 83.

[5] PSL arts. 109–11.

[6] PSL art. 44.

[7] PSL art. 101. Dower under Islamic law is divided into two types. Prompt dower is a sum of money or property that a husband is obliged to pay his wife immediately upon marriage. Deferred dower, by contrast, falls due only upon dissolution of the marriage, whether by divorce or the husband’s death.