AMMAN — The Lower House on Tuesday passed the 2018 amendments to the Civil Status and the Jordan Bar Association (JBA) laws.

 

The amended version of the Civil Status Law, as per its validating reasons, incorporates all acts and events concerning the life of a citizen without confining them to a certain school of Islamic law, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

 

The Chamber also scrapped a provision it added to the law on Sunday, under which rapist fathers would have the rights over their victims’ children, including parental lineage.

 

MPs on Tuesday reworded the provision, granting the court the exclusive right to decide the parental lineage using paternity testing technologies.

 

The new amendments also raise the age at which Sharia judges can grant marriage permits to minors to 16 instead of 15.

 

Activists, however, saw the change as “cosmetic”, renewing demands to raise it to 18.

 

 The new bill also allows a judge to grant marriage permits to people with mental disabilities, provided an official medical document proves that the marriage is in his or her best interests, that his or her condition is not hereditary and that he or she do not constitute any danger to their spouse.

 

The law stipulates that the court must inform the first wife or wives that their husband has married another, after the marriage takes place, and must ensure that a woman engaged to be married to a man who is already married is aware of his marital status.

 

The JBA Council’s term was raised to three years under the 2018 amendments to JBA Law, according to Petra.