Criteria for the Right to Dissolve Marriage in Unpleasant Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Articles 1121 to 1126 of the Civil Code discuss the defects by which the permission to dissolve the marriage contract is issued and state the related rules. In these articles, instead of providing criteria for termination of marriage, the cases of physical disorders and sexually transmitted diseases that have existed at the time of legislation and their occurrence has been the major reason to prescribe the dissolution of marriage for the other party to the contract have been enlisted. The emergence of some new diseases after the legislative age, being associated with more severity, dangers and painful consequences for the patient and more disgusting for the patient's spouse, raised the question that when the legislator has allowed the dissolution of marriage contract in the primary diseases of the legislative age, why should not it allow the termination of marriage in case of the newly-emerged diseases which on the one hand are riskier and incurable for the patient and on the other hand more disgusting for the patient's spouse than the diseases and defects of the age of legislation? In order to answer this question, a proposal to amend articles of the Civil Code was submitted to the Islamic Consultative Assembly in Tir 1398 S.H. (July 2009 AD), and despite the initial actions followed by the proposal in the Judiciary and Legal, Health, and Cultural Commissions, it was not seriously pursued to be approved by its drafters. The present study seeks to expurgate the above criteria from the validity evidence and adapt them to the criteria proposed in the 1398 legal draft.