Nehad Abulkoman, senior lawyer and ECWR’s chairwoman, confirmed that women in Egypt continue to suffer from lack of inheritance rights. Some families justify not giving women their right to inherit by not wanting the inheritance to go to a stranger. In addition, some families follow a custom called “Radwa” where the female is appeased with a sum of money in lieu of inheritance, but they undervalue their rights.
Abulkomsan stated that the legal text of Article 49 of Law No. 77 of 1943 regarding inheritance, in addition to Law No. 2019 of 2017, has criminalized refraining from handing over inheritance, or withholding any document proving a person’s legal right to inheritance. However, there are problems related to the mechanisms of implementation and the length of the litigation procedures, especially in light of the request of some judges to ‘sorting and excluding’ in a purpose of “ dividing the inheritance”, this matter drags on for many years in the civil court.
Therefore, ECWR has developed a vision that helps speed up litigation procedures in inheritance cases, which can be summarized in:
- Health offices shall send a copy of the death certificate of any deceased person to the court to determine an inheritance notification session, and all the inheritors are informed of it.
- In the inheritance notification session, the heirs are listed, along with ‘Devolution of estate’.
- An expert is appointed for a period of 3 months, whose task is to review the concerned authorities to verify the inheritance and bring documents to that effect, and these authorities are represented in banks, company registration, real estate taxes, agricultural tenure, and licenses.
- A Sorting and Excluding’ session is to be scheduled, in which the inheritance is sorted, excluding those who do not have the right to inherit, and handing over the inheritance in one session.
Abulkomsan calls on the Ministry of Justice for looking into this proposal, which solves thousands of inheritance cases that women and minor children suffer from.
