A legal requirement dictating that women need to give details about their marital status in deeds of property sales, including the name of their former husband, was discriminatory and hence unconstitutional, a court declared today.

The ruling was handed down by the Constitutional Court after a woman explained how she felt humiliated and disgusted when a notary told her that unless information regarding her personal status and her ex-husband's name were supplied, a promise of sale agreement would not be registered at the Public Registry. 

Marie Therese Cuschieri, 35, explained that she was legally separated from her husband in 2013 and had later divorced.

Yet, when she appeared as director of a company on a promise of sale agreement, the notary informed her that information regarding her personal status and her ex-husband's name had to be supplied.

She felt so disgusted and humiliated that she even nominated her son to appear in her stead on the final deed of sale.

She then filed a constitutional application against the Attorney General, arguing that the relevant clauses in the Notarial Profession and Archives Act constituted an invasion of her private life and that of her family.

The chief notary to government testified that the clauses in question were intended to ensure that legal searches before the publication of a contract be carried out successfully. Since a woman could change her surname, such personal information was necessary to determine whether a particular property had been acquired before or after marriage.

But the court observed that since this information was not requested in case of men, the article was not neutral and thus discriminatory.

Legal searches was not a legitimate justification but rather an administrative excuse, the court said.

The legal mechanism for the identification and removal of such discriminatory provisions under the law has been operative since 1991 and yet such an "anachronistic" provision clearly failed to acknowledge that men and women deserved equal treatment.

The court said the authorities could not blame an inefficient computerisation exercise. Although technical and bureaucratic problems are bound to crop up, even in relation to the system of legal searches, these were not insurmountable, especially in today's computerised age.

In this day and age when every person has an ID card, legal searches need not be effected on the basis of a person's civil status. Moreover, the law must reflect the present-day reality that men and women are equal partners in marriage.

The court concluded that the legal provision in question doubtlessly gave rise to a violation of the applicant's right to private life by "linking her indefinitely to a person who no longer formed part of her life".

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