By Lee Dryden
BridgeTower Media Newswires
DETROIT — A judgment ordering payment of a mahr, a traditional component of Islamic marriages, has been affirmed by a Michigan Court of Appeals panel.
In Ali v. Syed, the panel affirmed the Kent County Circuit Court in holding that the case does not require the resolution of any ecclesiastical questions. The defendant argued that the contract was made under Shariah law, not state law.
“The trial court did not claim any power to decide the parties’ respective religious obligations under the tenets of their faith tradition, but only decided the parties’ respective obligations under long-established principles of Michigan contract law,” the opinion stated.
The Jan. 29 unpublished per curiam opinion was issued by Judges Jane E. Markey, Michael J. Kelly and Brock A. Swartzle.
In 2012, defendant Khaja Naseeruddin Syed approached Mohammed Ali and asked for permission to marry plaintiff Nausheen Farnaz Ali, Ali’s daughter.
“Mr. Ali proposed that defendant could marry his daughter if defendant paid her $51,000, a payment the parties referred to as mahr, a traditional component of Islamic marriages,” the opinion stated. “Defendant agreed to the payment proposed by Mr. Ali. Plaintiff considered defendant’s offer of marriage, on the financial terms negotiated by her father, for approximately one year. Plaintiff ultimately decided to accept defendant’s proposal and the parties married in 2013.”
It is uncontested that the parties had only a verbal agreement for payment of $51,000, in consideration of marriage, until the day of the ceremony in Illinois. During that ceremony, the parties signed a document that placed the contract to marry in writing.
The defendant made several payments throughout the marriage, totaling $3,900 toward the $51,000 mahr. In 2016, the plaintiff filed an action for separate maintenance and the defendant filed a counterclaim for divorce.
“During the divorce trial, plaintiff asked the trial court to enforce the contract to marry and award her $47,100, the unpaid amount of the mahr. The trial court concluded that the parties executed a valid, simple contract and entered a judgment in plaintiff’s favor in the amount of $47,100,” according to the opinion.
The defendant appealed, arguing that the trial court erred in awarding the judgment.
The panel ruled that both parties waived any argument for the application of Illinois law because neither party argued for it, and the trial court stated that it was applying Michigan law.
The panel rejected the defendant’s argument that plaintiff failed to plead the contract under MCR 2.111(F)(3).
“Plaintiff sensibly raised the contract between the parties as one of the liabilities that the trial court had to determine and distribute between the parties. Plaintiff simply did not raise the contract as either a defense or an affirmative defense. Accordingly, MCR 2.111(F)(3) does not apply and defendant is not entitled to relief on this issue,” the opinion stated.
The defendant also was unsuccessful in arguing that the contract between the parties is an “unenforceable antenuptial agreement.”
It is clear from the face of the parties’ contract that it “did not attempt to address the division of property in the event of divorce. Rather, the contract provided for payment from defendant to plaintiff in the amount of $51,000 as consideration for plaintiff’s agreement to marry defendant,” according to the opinion.
As for the Shariah law issue, the defendant argued that the contract “merely provides for a religious obligation rather than an enforceable contractual obligation under Michigan law” and, under the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, Michigan courts lack jurisdiction to enforce Islamic marriage contracts.
The panel agreed with the trial court in rejecting that argument.
“Despite defendant’s argument that the contract was a ceremonial document governed only by Shariah law and not by the civil law of any state, we also stress that we are not interpreting or applying the contract between the parties under Shariah law, but are applying Michigan law to the review of the parties’ contract and the judgment of divorce entered by the trial court,” the opinion stated.
The defendant’s final unsuccessful argument was that “the contract is unenforceable because it is illusory and lacks consideration.”
“Plaintiff fulfilled her contractual promise to marry defendant. As our Supreme Court explained long ago, ‘The marriage was a performance on her part. She was entitled to performance on his part,’” the opinion stated, citing Bland v. Bland (1920).
“Under this long-established precedent, the contract was supported by adequate consideration and was not illusory.”
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