Manama: Saudi judges are setting a new trend in the country by using cigarette smoking as a factor in child custody cases.
“A parent could now lose the custody case if he or she is proven to be a smoker,” a legal official said.
“Under the emerging trend, the smoking factor is now being treated like the drinking factor and can decide the outcome of the custody case,” the expert who was not named said, quoted by local Arabic daily Al Eqtisadiya.
The court would favour nonsmoking parents and would factor smoking into custody cases to protect the child from the negative impact of passive smoking, he said.
In July, a Saudi judge ruled that women who suffered as a result of their husbands’ smoking could file for divorce.
“If a woman married a man and then found out that he is a smoker, and she mentioned in her case that she had, as a result of his smoking, a health issue in the chest and severe allergy, their marriage should be ended because of the harm smoking causes and the inability of the couple to continue their life together,” Appeals Judge Ebrahim Khodairi said in an interview published in the Arabic-language Saudi newspaper Al Watan .
However, he excluded the cases of those women who were aware of their husband’s smoking prior to finalising their marriage contract.
According to official figures Saudi Arabia, the fourth largest importer of cigarettes in the world, is home to nearly six million smokers, including 600,000 women and 772,000 teenagers.
Other countries that have made smoking a factor in determining child custody cases include the US where courts in 18 US states have ruled that a parent’s cigarette smoking habit should be considered.
