There are broadly two ways of thinking about marriage in Islamic law. The first sees it as a relationship of ownership: the husband holds effective control, reflected in his absolute right to divorce and the traditional requirement of his consent before a wife can dissolve the marriage through khula.¹ The second sees marriage as a religious duty and moral calling.² Neither model, on its own, adequately captures what marriage ought to look like in practice.

A third way, increasingly recognised by courts and scholars, draws on both: it treats marriage as a partnership, in which the spiritual equality of husband and wife before God translates into equal legal rights and mutual obligations within the marriage itself. It is this partnership model that Pakistan’s superior courts have been gradually moving towards, and it is against this backdrop that the Islamabad High Court’s recent judgment on matrimonial property must be understood.

For the first time, a superior court in Pakistan has recognised a wife’s legal right to matrimonial property and has held that the unpaid work she performs at home such as raising children, managing the household, and supporting family life, has genuine economic value that the law must acknowledge.

In Mst. Amara Waqas v Muhammad Waqas Rasheed and others (March 2026), the Islamabad High Court ruled that wives have a legal right to property accumulated during marriage under Islamic family law. Drawing on both Islamic and common law jurisprudence, Justice Kayani held that the principles of fairness require that a wife must share in the matrimonial property in addition to her other financial rights. He invoked the classical Islamic legal doctrine of partnership (shariqah), noting that where both spouses contribute to the acquisition of property, shared ownership may be recognised.

The judgment marks a significant milestone. For the first time, a superior court in Pakistan has recognised a wife’s legal right to matrimonial property and has held that the unpaid work she performs at home such as raising children, managing the household, and supporting family life, has genuine economic value that the law must acknowledge. And is a landmark step forward in protecting women’s financial rights in the event of divorce in Pakistan,³ as argued in scholarly literature.⁴ The judgment contributes to a growing body of Supreme Court jurisprudence that has progressively strengthened marriage. In Ambreen Akram v Asad Ullah Khan (2025), Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah held that a wife’s right to maintenance arises from the moment of marriage itself, and not from rukhsati or the consummation of the marriage. In Muhammad Aslam Chattha v Shehnaz Akhtar Zahoor Ahmed (2025), Justice Shahid Waheed held that a wife’s claim to maintenance is not subject to any limitation period, since it is a recurring right; he further held that a husband’s duty to provide maintenance is akin to that of a debtor, not merely a moral obligation. In Ibrahim Khan v Mst Saima Khan and others (2024), Justice Ayesha Malik held that a wife remains entitled to her dower even where her husband’s conduct compelled her to seek khula, a divorce initiated by the wife.

Yet the transformation is incomplete. One area of family law that urgently needs reform is a remedy called restitution of conjugal rights, a court order that forces a spouse who has left the marriage to return home and live with their partner. This rule was never part of Islamic law. It was brought in by British colonial courts from Christian legal tradition, and it has no grounding in Islamic teaching.⁵ In practice, husbands use it as a tactical weapon: when a wife goes to court seeking financial support, divorce, or custody of her children, her husband files for this order — effectively asking the court to send her home rather than hear her out. Despite sitting so uncomfortably with both Islamic values and constitutional guarantees of dignity and equality, Pakistani courts have so far refused to do away with it.⁶ Removing it remains one of the most overdue changes in Pakistani family law.

As judges treat marriage as a partnership of equals, they must move forward and leave behind remedies that belong to an older and discredited model, one in which a husband could compel his wife to return home rather than answer her grievances.

These developments point to something larger than doctrinal reform. When courts recognise that a wife’s unpaid labour at home has genuine economic value, they are implicitly challenging the assumption that has long structured both law and social expectation: that the husband earns and the wife depends. Giving legal weight to care work, including cooking, raising children, managing the household, begins to dismantle the idea that only paid work counts. This matters for how we think about marriage, about who bears its costs, and about what women are owed when it ends. As judges treat marriage as a partnership of equals, they must move forward and leave behind remedies that belong to an older and discredited model, one in which a husband could compel his wife to return home rather than answer her grievances. That colonialera remedy, imported into Muslim personal law without any grounding in Islamic tradition, has no place in a legal order that affirms the dignity and financial rights of wives. Abolishing it is not simply a legal technicality; it is a necessary step towards a conception of marriage in which women enter, remain, and leave on equal terms.

Muhammad Zubair Abbasi is from School of Law, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Kaveri Qureshi is from School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh.

1. Ali, K. (2010). Marriage and slavery in early Islam. Harvard University Press.
2. Mir-Hosseini, Z. (2000). Marriage on trial. IB Tauris.
3. Malik, M., Kamal, H., Gilani, A. H., Javaid, S., & Allawala, Z. A. (2021). Matrimonial Property: Protecting Women
   Financially. LUMS LJ, 8, 70.
4. 'Constructive Trusts under Muslim Family Law: Acknowledging Women’s Rights to Matrimonial Property’ in Asia-
   Pacific Trusts Law: Theory and Practice in Context (Hart Publisher 2021).
5. MZ Abbasi, (2022). Dead at Home, Alive Abroad: Restitution of Conjugal Rights in South Asia. Islamic Studies, 61(1),
   9–24.
6. Ibid.