Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 45

Summary: - Article 74 of Law No. 51 of 1984 concerning Personal Status. Its import: a wife is entitled to spousal maintenance from her husband, including rent for the matrimonial home, and enjoyment of the home requires that it be prepared for the living conditions appropriate to women of the wife’s standing by furnishing it with suitable furniture. - The nature of grounds of judgment tainted by defective reasoning. The instances thereof: reliance on evidence unsuitable to support conviction, failure to understand the factual elements established before the court, or a contradiction between those elements, as where the conclusion reached by the court does not logically follow from those elements. - The challenged judgment’s ruling that the appellant was entitled to rent for the matrimonial home, while refusing its furnishing expenses on the basis that they were not elements of spousal maintenance, which does not rationally lead to the conclusion it reached. This vitiates it by defective reasoning, requiring its cassation. Rule: It is established—in the jurisprudence of this Court—and pursuant to the text of Article 74 of Law No. 51 of 1984 concerning Personal Status and what the Law’s Explanatory Memorandum discloses, that a wife is entitled to comprehensive spousal maintenance from her husband, including rent for the matrimonial home, because she is bound to him by virtue of the marriage contract, and that enjoyment of the home requires that it be prepared for the living conditions appropriate to women of the wife’s standing by furnishing it with suitable furniture. It is also established that the grounds of a judgment are considered tainted by defective reasoning if they contain a defect affecting the soundness of the inference. This occurs if the court, in forming its conviction, relies on evidence objectively unsuitable to support that conviction, fails to understand the factual elements established before it, or there is a contradiction between those elements, as where the conclusion reached by the court does not logically follow from those elements established before it. That being so, the first-instance judgment upheld by the challenged judgment, having concluded that the appellant was entitled to rent for a matrimonial home as an element of the wife’s maintenance payable by her husband, nevertheless refused the expenses of furnishing that home, on the grounds stated in its reasons that they were not among the elements of spousal maintenance and that the appellant had not submitted anything showing that she had rented a home. What the judgment stated does not rationally lead to the conclusion it reached, since enjoyment of the matrimonial home requires furnishing it. Since the challenged judgment departed from this view, it is vitiated by defective reasoning, requiring its cassation in this part.