Text Hit: We're Through!

Amanda Lockhart — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:00:00 -0500

Here's a great story for the digital age: Divorce by phone — or by text message, to be perfectly accurate.

A woman in Egypt is trying to determine whether a text message she received from her husband telling her their marriage was over can be legally binding. Seriously, she may have a case.

Apparently Islamic law says that a man may unilaterally end a marriage by clearly stating to his wife three times that he wants a divorce. (Hey, you have to love that Islam — it may subjugate women, but at least they know how to get a divorce done. We don't need no stinkin' lawyers, just say it three times and "Poof" it's all over!) Anyway, the woman says she has three text messages where her husband told her it's over, and now she's asking a court to decide whether those texts count or not.

This comes on the heels of the man in Saudi Arabia who announced he was leaving his wife over the intercom at a grocery store. Truthfully, I'm not sure this would count. Surely he'd need to make similar announcements at Target and Best Buy as well in order to make it stick.

In all seriousness, I think this story raises some interesting questions about communication in the digital age. I think we all have a tendency to fee like e-mail and text messaging are a less-formal form of communication than a conversation or a typewritten letter. And so we may say things that we really don't mean or wouldn't say if we were face to face with someone. I have to think that even in a male-dominated Islamic culture, three texts equals a divorce. Whether it does or not, it should force everyone to take all forms of electronic communication more seriously.

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Text Hit: We're Through!