Nineveh governorate ranked first among Iraqi governorates in terms of second marriage applications, according to statistics of the Supreme Judicial Council for the first quarter of this year.
Statistics for the first three months of this year indicated that 1,813 applications for second marriages were recorded in Iraqi courts. Nineveh topped the statistic with 319 applications, followed by Basra governorate with 189 cases, then Anbar with 181 under the pretext of permission to marry a second wife.
Second marriage cases increased in Nineveh, where the number of second marriages in the third quarter of last year reached 220 out of a total of 1,602 throughout Iraq, and Basra was the first in that period.
Regarding the reasons that motivates men to marry second wife under Islam, the Council of Social Researchers in the Supreme Judicial Council says that "the reasons that motivate a man to marry again are different, including those related to the conditions of the first wife, such as her being in poor health, unable to have children, or the lack of harmony and bad intercourse.”
Islam allows polygamy and permits men, under specific circumstances, to have at most four wives at any given time.
“There are other reasons related to the husband, namely the desire to re-marry and the financial and physical ability to marry a second wife.”
According to the personal status law in force in the Iraqi courts, for a man to have the second wife, it is required that the husband should be financially capable to support more than one wife, and that there is a legitimate interest.
The number of divorces registered in Nineveh during the first three months of this year reached 1,400 cases, while 8,425 marriages were recorded. In all of Iraq, with the exception of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region IKR, the number of divorce cases during that period reached 19,000, compared to more than 80,000 marriages.
About 1,785 divorce cases ended with reconciliation, according to the statistics of the Supreme Judicial Council, most of which were recorded in Baghdad, followed by Nineveh Governorate, with 220 reconciliations.
During the same period, about 40,000 cases were submitted to the personal status courts, the majority of which were in Baghdad, followed by Nineveh, and 32,000 cases were settled.
