He has photographs or a video, and he is using them. Sometimes to stop you leaving. Sometimes after you have left. Sometimes they have already been sent to one person, as a demonstration of what could happen next. Two…
A great deal of what is written about domestic abuse assumes a marriage, and women who are not married frequently conclude that none of it applies to them, that nobody will take it seriously, and that there is nothing…
The most useful feature of a protection order is not what it forbids. It is that breaching it is itself an offence, which means the police can act on the breach without having to prove the original abuse all…
A woman reports an assault. He is arrested. By evening he is home, and often angrier than before. Most women read this as proof that the complaint failed and that the police did nothing. Usually that is not what…
Almost everything frightening about a first court appearance is the not knowing. This is a plain description of the shape of a day, so that nothing on it is a surprise. Procedure varies between courts and between states, and…
Ask a woman in a customary marriage what stops her leaving and quite often it is not the beatings, the money or the children. It is that her father would have to find the bride price, and her family…
Ending a marriage in Nigeria depends on how the marriage was contracted. Statutory marriages, customary marriages and Islamic marriages are dissolved through different courts under different rules, and the differences are substantial rather than technical. This is an outline…
Almost every legal question a woman asks us — can I divorce him, what am I entitled to, who gets the children, can I claim maintenance — has the same first answer, which is another question. What kind of…
Most writing about Nigerian family law describes the High Court. Most women never go near one. They end up in a Customary Court or a Sharia Court, because that is what governs their marriage, and because those courts are…
Two things get confused constantly, and separating them makes everything easier. Child maintenance is money for the children. It is owed because they are his children, and it does not depend on the marriage, on who left, on whose…
