33 Kuwaiti women file for divorce

More than 30 Kuwaiti women have filed for divorce after they discovered that their husbands spent the New Year’s Eve in Lebanon while claiming they were performing Umrah in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, a Kuwaiti lawyer said. “Many husbands cause the end of their marriages by cheating and lying to their wives,” Abdullah Al Shibani said. Spiritual trip “At the beginning of this year, 33 Kuwaiti contacted me to file for divorce after they discovered that their husbands who said that they were on a spiritual trip to Makkah to perform Umrah in Saudi Arabia went in fact to Lebanon to celebrate New Year’s Eve,” the lawyer said, Al Seyassah daily reported on Tuesday. Article continues below Several activists and religious leaders have been calling for greater awareness about the significance of marriage amid alarming reports about the increasing rate of divorce in Kuwait. “At times, we have the impression that divorce is a trend, a fashion, among spouses who put an end to their marriage even when they have to deal with slight problems,” Al Shibani said. Trivial “In a high number of cases, the husband files to divorce his wife for trivial reasons, such as when she colours her hair without asking for his opinion or because he feels she has a bad mouth smell.” According to marriage counsellors cited by the daily, a large number of divorce cases are caused by “outsiders”. Some husbands tend to share their home secrets with friends and allow them to interfere in their domestic lives and to encourage them to file for divorce, the counselors said. Many wives seek divorce after they are “pushed” by friends to get rid of their husbands, they said.