A secret Pakistani divorce obtained under Sharia law without the wife’s knowledge cannot be recognized in Texas, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The case involves Hira Azhar and Mohammad Ali Choudhri, a Houston couple who accumulated more than $100 million in community assets during their marriage.
According to the court, Choudhri had lived in Houston since he was three years old before traveling to Pakistan, where he married Azhar in 2008 through an arranged marriage. Azhar moved to Houston in 2010 after obtaining a visa.
In 2012, Choudhri sent Azhar back to Pakistan, ostensibly to renew her visa. The following year, however, he obtained a divorce without her knowledge through a proceeding known as “talaq.”
Under the procedure described by the court, a husband can initiate a divorce by pronouncing his intent to divorce his wife three times. The wife does not have to be present or even aware of the pronouncements and cannot object to the talaq.
Azhar received no direct notice of the divorce proceedings. Instead, Choudhri purported to provide notice through an advertisement published in a small Pakistani newspaper five days beforehand.
She did not see the notice and did not learn she had been divorced until two years later.
After returning to Houston in 2015, Azhar filed for divorce in Harris County and sought a division of the couple’s marital property.
A Harris County court recognized the Pakistani proceedings under the legal doctrine of international comity and dismissed her divorce petition. The court also denied her claim for division of the marital estate.
Comity is a legal principle under which courts may recognize and enforce judgments issued by foreign countries.
According to testimony cited by the Texas Supreme Court, Pakistan does not recognize community property. Instead, each spouse is generally entitled to property titled in his or her own name.
The First Court of Appeals in Houston upheld the lower court’s decision.
The Texas Supreme Court reversed that ruling Friday, concluding that the notice provided to Azhar was constitutionally inadequate.
The court noted that Choudhri presented no evidence that ordinary methods of communicating with his wife—including telephone calls, text messages, email, social media, mutual friends, or in-person communication—were unavailable.
“The notice in this case, involving five days of publication in a single obscure outlet, does not suffice,” the court wrote.
The justices said foreign judgments are not automatically entitled to recognition in Texas when they conflict with the state’s fundamental public policies or constitutional protections.
“As a matter of law, the notice provided here is constitutionally inadequate, and far short of what our public policy demands,” the court wrote. “Other countries are welcome to conclude otherwise, but their judgments are not entitled to comity in a Texas court.”
The court stressed that its ruling does not mean every foreign judgment involving different notice procedures must be rejected.
Rather, the justices said the decision was based on the specific circumstances of the case and the fundamental requirement that parties receive meaningful notice before being bound by a court judgment.
“No foreign judgment is entitled to comity when it contradicts the fundamental guarantees of the Texas and United States Constitutions,” the court concluded.
The Supreme Court reversed the appeals court’s judgment and sent the case back to the trial court for further proceedings.
The ruling comes just months after nearly 95 percent of Texas Republican primary voters supported an advisory ballot proposition stating that “Texas should prohibit Sharia Law.”
In 2017, Texas lawmakers passed House Bill 45, directing the Texas Supreme Court to establish safeguards against foreign judgments in family law cases that violate constitutional rights or Texas public policy.
The court subsequently adopted Rule 308b, which requires hearings before certain foreign judgments can be enforced. The rule did not apply in this case, however, because Azhar filed her lawsuit before it took effect in 2018.
