The AMLA Amendments - Association of Muslim Professionals

KARYAWAN
The AMLA Amendments AMLA & Social Resilience Capital
Women’s Woes
In many instances, wives do not even bother to seek
maintenance. Those who go on to divorce share, such
as this one: “My husband did not provide maintenance
while we were married. Why would I think he will provide
for my family when we are divorced” These women
know their rights to maintenance but experience
teaches them to look elsewhere to sustain themselves.
maintenance to their wives and children. It is important to stress
from the onset that the ideas presented in this article emerge from
my eleven years of clinical work with Malay/Muslim families and
thus may be reflective only of this clientele group.
Why Men Do Not Maintain Their Families Post-Divorce
Money Problems Made Worse
The lack of knowledge is rarely the reason men falter. In cases of
non-maintenance, many forces influence the men’s maintenancegiving.
These men can be loosely classified in three categories
– men who cannot pay, men who do not want to pay, and men
who cannot and do not want to pay.
The first may be genuine hardship cases. After all, collectively, we
are an economically challenged community, with lower education
levels and a corresponding lower ability to fulfill basic familial
functions. According to the General Household Survey 2005, the
median monthly household income for Malays was lower than
the national average at $3,100 in 2005, almost $1,500 and $1000
below that for the Chinese and Indian communities respectively.
Two in three of those in the workforce have secondary education
or lower. The average household size of Malay families is 4.1,
higher than the national average of 3.6. On top of this, 53.6% of
married Malay females (20 to 59 years) are economically inactive
– higher than the figures for other ethnic groups.
Thus, we may extrapolate that the typical Malay man is a lower
educated sole breadwinner who earns less than $2,000 but has
many mouths to feed. We see men who genuinely struggle with
issues of maintenance, on top of other things, as they do not bring
home enough or have difficulties finding and sustaining work.
Then, of course, there are those who are incarcerated. It also does
not help that many men stonewall when faced with financial
problems instead of engaging their spouse in problem-solving.
Alternatively, they engage in unconstructive behaviour like
gambling, drinking, spending time with friends to cope with their
problems – causing further damage to their relationship. Others
have affairs to escape.
Will this latest amendment to AMLA then make it easier
for women to claim their maintenance and consolatory
gift, and thus aid them to fulfill their roles as single
parents more effectively Not necessarily. As long as the
Malay male is economically weak, women may still find
that seeking the legal route does not help. In fact, by
enforcing maintenance orders on such men, we may
be crippling their ability to feed their new reconstituted
family and cause further tension. This may perpetuate a
new cycle of dysfunctionality.
There are also women who do not wish to enforce
orders because of the likelihood of fines or a jail term
for errant ex-husbands. Such consequences reduce
the probability of receiving maintenance at all. It may
also increase the risk of stigmatisation for the women
who are blamed for causing pain and difficulties to
the newly reconstituted families or even the men’s
family-of-origin.
When Values Matter
A man’s willingness to pay maintenance is mediated by
his values, beliefs and attitudes towards providing for his
ex-wife and children. The Court’s attempts to facilitate
payment are also not foolproof. In some cases where
the Court ordered for payments to be deducted from
the ex-husband’s monthly salaries, the men simply left
their jobs and found new ones. It takes perseverance
on the women’s part and much time and grief going
back and forth to the Court to seek and claim what they
consider as rightly theirs or their children’s.
As long as our Malay men lack the capacity and right
values to support women and children financially, it will
be difficult to apply the legal system to ease the burden
of single-parenting. As long as the values of compassion,
honour and responsibility are not upheld, women may
find it more expedient to fend for themselves or depend
on formal sources of support.
Engaging Men
There are many empowerment programmes for single
female heads of household presently. The Singapore
Muslim Women’s Association (PPIS), the Association of
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