Tehran’s move to sharply limit a man’s liability for paying his wife mehriyeh—a gift of value promised at marriage—has triggered a fierce social debate, with critics warning that it tilts the legal balance further away from women.
On Wednesday, Iran’s parliament voted to cut the threshold for criminal enforcement from the long-standing ceiling of 110 gold coins, introduced in 2013, to just 14.
The measure passed as part of a broader bill to curb the criminalization of debt.
Legal scholar Mohsen Borhani was among the first to sound the alarm when the proposal surfaced earlier this year.
“Once again, a misogynistic bill is moving toward approval,” he posted on X, arguing that mehriyeh remains one of the few practical tools women have in a system where laws and practices heavily favor men.
Lawmakers, he wrote, should revise “all the reciprocal rights of spouses, not tilt the law to one side, and certainly not in a way that harms women.”
Mehriyeh, the inverse of dowry in Western traditions, is negotiated before marriage and legally treated as a debt. It becomes payable at divorce, on demand, or from the husband’s estate if he dies.
While it can take the form of money, property, or symbolic items, government-minted gold coins have become standard over the past few decades; amounts routinely reach hundreds of coins, each worth around $1,000.
Some conservatives inside parliament echoed that concern this week.
Lawmaker Sara Fallahi said the decision would alienate the public from religion “because it limits women’s rights in the name of Sharia.”
Supporters, including Mehrdad Lahouti, counter that more than 25,000 men have been jailed over unpaid mehriyeh and insist the reform will reduce imprisonment for debt.
For decades, criminal enforcement has been central to the function of mehriyeh: it gave women a swift and powerful remedy when husbands refused payment and acted as one of the few bargaining tools available in divorce or marital disputes.
Ankle monitor
Under the new rule, a man unable to pay more than 14 coins could be fitted with an electronic ankle monitor rather than jailed while the remaining debt is pursued.
The legislation still requires approval by the Guardian Council. If finalized, only claims up to 14 coins could trigger criminal sanctions; everything above that would fall into slow and often uncertain civil litigation.
Many families choose 14 coins in reference to the 12 Shi’a Imams plus Prophet Mohammad and his daughter, Fatima.
In many divorces, women surrender part or all of their mehriyeh in exchange for custody or simply for the husband’s consent to dissolve the marriage—another reason reform critics view mehriyeh as a crucial form of leverage in a system already tilted toward men.
Iran’s Sharia-based legal framework contains numerous provisions that disadvantage women, particularly in family and inheritance law.
Men can divorce without proving fault, bar their wives from working or traveling abroad, and legally marry multiple wives. Women must establish serious grounds to obtain a divorce and often rely on mehriyeh as the only enforceable financial safeguard available to them.
Critics fear that without the threat of criminal consequences, many wives—especially those without independent income—will be left to pursue claims through years of civil litigation with little guarantee of recovery.
“Such an approach will easily widen the gender gap and undermine public trust in the process of reforming family laws,” the conservative Farhikhtegan daily warned.