Drafters should replace these systems with modified or partial community of property systems as the default regime. Promising Practices: Turkey: Drafters should amend legislation to provide for modified or partial community of property as the default system unless both parties mutually opt out before a notary or other authority. Turkey introduced legal reforms in its civil code that promote women’s human rights with respect to marital property. Prior to the reforms, Turkey’s default marital property system was complete separation of property, where each spouse is the owner of any property registered under his or her name. As most property tended to be registered under the husband’s name, this deprived women of much of the marital property upon dissolution. The reforms introduced a default system of equal division of acquired property, so that both spouses receive an equal portion of all property acquired during the marriage. Each spouse retains individual ownership rights over his or her personal property, or that acquired prior to the marriage or received as personal gifts during the marriage. Also, amendments grant both spouses equal rights over acquired property and the marital home. The law is not retroactive to property acquired prior to 2002, however, unless spouses registered their marriage before 2003. (See: Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, In Search of Equality: A Survey of Law and Practice Related to Women’s Inheritance rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, 2006; Women’s Ways for Human Rights, Turkish Civil Code Turkish Civil and Penal Code Reforms from a Gender Perspective: The Success of Two Nationwide Campaigns)
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 10:45:38 +0000
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