Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — The Ministry of Justice has announced that divorced women will receive divorce documents from the courts through SMS notification. The announcement followed complaints by a number of women about not receiving their divorce deeds through post.

Minister of Justice and President of Supreme Judicial Council Waleed Al-Samaani said divorce deeds used to be mailed to the postal addresses registered at the National Information Center.

“The ministry had previously unified its records by linking up with the database of the National Information Center and the Interior Ministry's Absher portal. The social status of citizens is immediately updated in their Absher accounts whenever a divorce petition is approved. To protect the rights of women and to ensure that their divorce deeds reach them without delay, we have launched the SMS service that will notify the women of their marital status the moment the divorce is approved,” said Al-Samaani.

Many people took to Twitter to vent their anger over numerous cases where women had no idea that they were divorced, a matter which had immensely affected their lives.

One of the accounts stated that a woman found out that she was divorced more than 15 years later after the death of her husband. She had been living with him as husband and wife when he died. It was only when she went to the court to claim her inheritance she found out that her husband had divorced her more than a decade ago and that she had no right to inherit him.

According to one tweet, a woman learned about her divorce from her ex-husband's sisters when they used the information to humiliate her.

One woman tweeted that her husband waited until Ramadan to tell her that he had divorced her because he wanted her to cook for him.

Another woman said her husband divorced her but he never told her until she got pregnant. He then denied the child was his and refused to shoulder any financial responsibility.