A Supreme Court judge has given a Burnaby man 14 days to file for an Islamic Iranian divorce from a wife who has already divorced him in Canada.
Armin Kariminia and Fariba Nasser were married in Iran in 1994, according to court documents.
After having two children, they were separated in B.C. in 2012. Nasser filed for divorce in 2013, and the couple was officially divorced in Canada in 2015.
In Iran, however, they are still considered married.
Nasser tried twice to get an Iranian divorce, according to court documents, but was denied because only men have the right to divorce under that country’s sharia law.
Women can apply to a judge “should continuation of matrimonial life lead to distress and constriction of the wife,” according to an Iranian court ruling cited in B.C. Supreme Court documents, but the court in Iran ruled Nasser’s lawsuit was “not substantiated.”
In an application to B.C. Supreme Court, Nasser said that, without the Iranian divorce, she could not travel to Iran to visit her elderly mother and disabled sister, whom she has not seen since 2012.
An Iranian lawyer has told her that, if she travels to Iran, Kariminia could ban her from leaving the country since the pair are still considered married in Iran, and Kariminia, as her “husband,” would control her ability to travel, according to court documents.
Kariminia has opposed the Iranian divorce, and court documents cite texts from Kariminia to Nasser that set out his position, including statements like “About the divorce, dream on…” and “I will not let it happen even if you mobilize the whole world.”
In a ruling ordering Kariminia to file and pay for an Iranian divorce within 14 days, Justice Carla Forth said it would be against Canadian public policy to recognize that Kariminia, as a man, had the exclusive right to the Islamic Iranian divorce.
“Such a finding would effectively restrict (Nasser) from visiting her aging mother and disabled sister in Iran,” she said in her May 1 ruling. “This is unwarranted in light of Canadian views and jurisprudence on the equality of sexes, and the harm to (Nasser) is an injustice that offends Canadian morality.”
Forth said precedents in Canadian courts had established that “religious freedoms are subject to limitations when they disproportionately collide with other significant public rights and interests and that conduct which would potentially cause harm to or interfere with the righ ts of others would not automatically be protected.”
Besides the divorce, Forth also ordered Kariminia to pay Nasser $3,463 in unpaid child support and $49,020 to fulfil the terms of the couple’s 1994 Iranian marriage contract, which stipulated Kariminia would pay a maher, or “marriage portion,” of 114 Bahar Azadi 22k gold coins, currently worth about $49,020 CAD.
In Islam, a maher is a mandatory payment of money or possessions paid by the groom or groom’s father to the bride at the time of marriage. It legally becomes her property.
