Mother loses children to shisha

A mother in Kuwait has lost the custody of her children after being accused of spending hours smoking shisha outside her home, according to a story in the Gulf News citing a report in the Kuwaiti daily, Al Qabas.

The Family Court reportedly said that the evidence had shown the mother had devoted a lot of her time to smoking shisha, a fact that had affected her health and made her socially unfit to raise her children and look after their wellbeing.

The court said that the prolonged shisha smoking comprised legal grounds enough to remove the children from their mother.

Meanwhile, some legal experts said that the same legal grounds could be used in cases filed by mothers against their former husbands who had spent long hours smoking shishas outside their home.

The experts argued that courts should uphold the principle in all cases, regardless of gender, where people were found guilty of negligence towards children or of putting their lives at risk because of heavy smoking.

However, they added that no mother had so far raised the heavy-smoking argument in any custody case.

On the other hand, lawyers told the daily that some wives who wanted to obtain divorces resorted to heavy smoking in order to force their husbands to file for the end of their union.

In 2012, judges in Saudi Arabia set a new trend in the country by using cigarette smoking as a factor in child custody cases.

“A parent could now lose the custody case if he or she is proven to be a smoker,” a legal official said.

“Under the emerging trend, the smoking factor is now being treated like the drinking factor and can decide the outcome of the custody case.”

The story said a court would favor non-smoking parents and the judge would factor smoking into custody cases to protect the child from the negative impact of passive smoking.