(Y) Personal Status

Some have mentioned what occurred to them regarding my omission of any reference in my previous report to the manner of dealing with matters related to personal status. My omission of this was not an act of charity, as this matter had been investigated. However, I was not in a position when writing my previous report to fully discuss this important and difficult issue, nor am I prepared to do so now. But I will refer to the most prominent aspects that fall within the scope of the project I seek to have accepted, and I say:

In this regard, there are two issues. The first is whether the Legislative Council has the authority to enact laws concerning the original law of personal status. The second is whether it has the authority to grant the Governor jurisdiction over personal status cases.

Regarding the first issue, my opinion is that the Council should not have the authority to enact laws to be followed in important matters falling within the scope of personal status, such as marriage, divorce, legitimate children, and the like. However, there may be specific cases to which the laws of the nation to which the parties to the case belong do not apply. For these cases, it may be in the interest of the Europeans residing in the Egyptian territory for the Council to have a limited authority to enact laws for them. For example, some alimony cases do not fall under the laws of the nation to which they belong. It is customary that those involved in alimony cases are all of the same nationality (belonging to the same nation), and therefore these cases fall outside the jurisdiction of the Mixed Courts. However, it may happen that the husband is from one nation and the wife from another in some cases, so the law of the nation does not apply to them, and therefore the consular courts do not have jurisdiction over them. For this reason, the vague general rule was adopted, and the Mixed Courts were given jurisdiction over them. Articles 217-220 were added to the Civil Code for this purpose.

An example of what would be beneficial is for the Council to have limited legislative authority in what is referred to as the "law of lunacy," by enacting a single law for the insane, arguing that this is not without merit. I reserve my opinion on this matter, but it will be presented in its context and similar cases to a committee of qualified experts. If they find strong objections to granting the Council this limited legislative authority, there is no harm in abandoning this matter entirely and removing personal status altogether from the Council's authority, as the project I am considering does not require the inclusion of even the slightest part of it.