Parliament approves Shia codified statute for Personal Status Law

Parliament has formally approved the Ja’fari codified statute for the amended Personal Status Law, six months after the bill’s initial passage. The codified statute was a prerequisite within the legislation and represents the incorporation of Shia jurisprudence into statutory family law.

It organizes centuries of jurisprudential rulings into a structured legal framework that will now govern matters of marriage, divorce, custody, lineage, and maintenance for Iraq’s Shia population, should married couples opt to apply it as an alternative to the existing civil law framework. Sunni legislators, by contrast, chose not to introduce a corresponding Sunni statute into the law.