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What can a woman do if she's in a forced marriage and wants a divorce? Religious, cultural, and legal issues often collide, creating tangled situations that have to be carefully handled, especially if there are also immigration issues involved. These are some important facts to know.
1.) A forced marriage isn't the same thing as an arranged marriage.
A woman in an arranged marriage may have had her spouse selected by her family, based on his perceived suitability for social and economic reasons, but she still had the right to refuse the match and could do so without fear of retaliation by her family, the intended groom, or anybody else.
A woman in a forced marriage was not given the ability to refuse the marriage, and it took place without her full consent. Full consent can be lacking because:
There were around 3,000 known forced marriages in the U.S. from 2009 to 2011, and many experts say that the real number is likely much higher.
2.) Immigrant women are especially vulnerable to forced marriages.
Many victims of forced marriages are immigrants, which further complicates their problems if they try to seek a divorce. Language barriers and a poor understanding of their legal rights can make it difficult for them to seek help leaving a forced marriage.
Even where those issues aren't a problem, the women are often dependent on their spouses - who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents - to file immigration petitions for them. This can leave a woman open to threats of deportation and abandonment back in her home country should she seek to leave divorce her spouse. If there are children involved, the spouse may threaten to have the woman deported, away from her U.S.-born children.
3.) There are laws in place to help women who are seeking to leave forced marriages.
Whether an immigrant or born in the U.S., a woman seeking to leave a forced marriage does have legal rights, and there are laws aimed at protecting her.
Depending on the situation, it may be possible to annul the marriage outright, rather than seek a divorce. For example, a U.S.-born victim of a forced marriage might show that she was under her state's legal age to marry and that her parents consented because they were forcing her into the marriage, not at her request.
If the woman is an immigrant to the U.S. and she has been subjected to domestic or sexual violence during her marriage, she does not need her spouse to file for her immigration petition. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) confers certain protections to women so that they don't lose their ability to stay in the U.S. if they decide to flee a forced marriage. This is also true for young women seeking divorces whose parents participated in forcing them to marry, since that is considered a form of abuse.
There are also laws that can help protect women who flee forced marriages from violence by their abusers or own family members. Protective orders can be issued that will prohibit abusive spouses and other relatives from harassing the women as they go through the divorce process. Divorce lawyers can help here.
If you or someone you know is in a forced marriage and wants a divorce, the situation is far from hopeless, even if there are immigration issues involved. Growing awareness of the problem has opened new avenues of assistance, and the laws are shifting in order to protect women from this sort of domestic abuse.
Share15 April 2015