The Law on Marital Property in Africa

The book focuses on the ownership and distribution of marital property upon the dissolution of marriages in Africa. In each of the 16 African countries, the laws on the subject are drawn from different systems of law, whether customary, state law or religious law, and are enmeshed in a complex scheme of legal pluralism. The laws developed by the various internal systems of law have often been unfair, as women seem to have been discriminated against and have little by way of property rights, both in and out of marriages. Scholars researching African family law have conducted individual studies of marital property rights at the state level. Consequently, there is no comparative text that explains how laws in Africa regulate property rights in the context of marriage and divorce. This book seeks to fill this gap by highlighting shared themes such as spousal property classification, legal pluralism, marriage contracts, irregular unions, and human rights, and offering a comparative perspective on fairness and justice in marital property distribution. The book defines marital property as understood in different legal contexts and evaluates the legal framework governing the rights that spouses have in marital property during the subsistence of the marriage and on divorce. The book also assesses the impact of international and domestic human rights law on each country’s legal framework for the ownership and distribution of marital property upon divorce, and offers recommendations for improving these frameworks.