Monrovia, Liberia – Family law practitioner Cllr. Moriah Yeakula has publicly challenged a position attributed to Gender Minister regarding the responsibility of working wives to support unemployed husbands, arguing that Liberia’s Domestic Relations Law does not impose such a broad obligation on women.
In a Facebook response, Yeakula told the Minister that the interpretation was legally incorrect and urged the Ministry to review the statutory provision and relevant Supreme Court opinions before advising the public.
The lawyer focused particularly on Chapter 5, Section 5.3(e) of the Domestic Relations Law, which addresses circumstances under which a wife may be required to support her husband.
According to Yeakula, the provision applies where a husband is incapable of supporting himself and is, or is likely to become, a public charge.
She argued that those conditions are materially different from simply being unemployed.
In her interpretation, incapacity refers to circumstances in which a person is genuinely unable to earn a livelihood, citing situations such as serious illness, physical disability, mental illness or other conditions that prevent the individual from supporting himself.
Unemployment alone, she maintained, does not automatically meet that legal threshold.
Yeakula questioned whether an otherwise capable man who is unemployed but able to work could properly be classified as incapable of supporting himself under the provision.
She argued that the statutory framework instead places the primary legal responsibility for supporting a wife on the husband.
She also pointed to provisions dealing with children, saying the law identifies specific circumstances in which a woman may become responsible for child support, including situations where the father cannot be found, is deceased or is incapable of providing support.
The lawyer further invoked a line of Liberian Supreme Court decisions which she said have consistently recognized the husband’s legal obligation to support his wife.
Among the cases she cited were Dean v. Dean (1939), Vincent-Harding v. Harding (1983), Garnett v. Garnetts (2007), Brown v. Kollie (2014) and Kogar v. Kogar (2023).
Yeakula said the decisions demonstrate that a man’s financial hardship does not, by itself, extinguish his legal responsibility toward his wife.
She specifically referred to the principle that a husband’s claim of poverty does not necessarily relieve him of his obligation where he remains capable of earning.
The lawyer also highlighted the statutory provision concerning support based on a person’s ability to earn, arguing that an unemployed man who remains capable of working cannot automatically be treated as incapable of earning.
Yeakula went further by questioning the legal foundation behind the Minister’s position.
She called on the Gender Ministry’s legal advisers to identify Supreme Court decisions supporting an interpretation that women are required to support unemployed husbands and children merely because the women are earning an income.
If no such authority exists, she urged the Minister to withdraw or correct the information provided to the public.
The intervention places a legal interpretation at the center of a wider public discussion about household responsibilities, unemployment and gender roles.
Yeakula cautioned that government institutions must be particularly careful when interpreting family law because their guidance can influence decisions affecting the welfare and security of women and children.
