Common Divorce Settlement Agreements Mistakes to Avoid in Dubai
Most failed settlements were not unfair. They were unfinished.
The drafting failures that leave divorce settlements in Dubai hard to enforce: never asking what happens on the morning the other party stops performing, lifting a forum clause out of a commercial template, waiving a child's maintenance, signing on incomplete disclosure, and describing transfers without the steps that deliver them.
Reviewed by Mohamed Noureldin, Founder, Managing Partner & Senior Legal Consultant
A signed settlement is not an outcome. It is a document, and its worth depends entirely on what a court will do with it when one party stops cooperating. Most of the settlements that fail in Dubai were not unfair; they were unfinished. The parties agreed the substance, wrote it down, and left out the machinery that makes it work.
The mistakes below come up repeatedly, and every one of them is cheaper to fix at the drafting table than after a default.
Treating the agreement as the end of the process
A settlement reached between spouses is a contract, and people routinely expect more of it than a contract delivers. The signature closes the negotiation. It does not close the file, and the question nobody asks at the moment of signing is the only one that matters afterwards: what exactly does the party who is owed something do on the morning the other one stops performing?
Ask it before signing, term by term, and take advice on what turning each term into something enforceable actually involves. It matters most for the parts that are not simply payments of money: handover arrangements, travel consent, who holds the passports. Those are the terms a party under pressure stops honouring, and the terms where the gap between what the document says and what can be made to happen is widest.
Copying a forum clause out of a commercial template
The UAE is not served by a single court system. Alongside the onshore courts, the Dubai International Financial Centre and Abu Dhabi Global Market run their own common-law courts, with their own rules and their own registrars. Clauses selecting one or another get copied into all sorts of documents, usually by people who liked the wording in a commercial contract and never asked whether it suits a marriage.
A forum clause is worth only what it delivers on the day one party stops cooperating. Before adopting one, establish which court will take the family questions — divorce, custody, guardianship, maintenance — and, as a separate question, where a debt created by the settlement would have to be pursued if the party or the asset sits somewhere else. The two answers are not necessarily the same. Say plainly in the document which court is being chosen for what, rather than pointing everything at one named forum and hoping.
Agreeing terms about children that are not the parents’ to agree
Parents can settle almost everything between themselves. What they cannot do is bind the court on the child. Custody, guardianship and the maintenance owed to a child are decided by reference to the child’s interests, and a clause in which one parent waives a child’s maintenance, or gives up contact permanently in exchange for a payment, is not the safe purchase it looks like.
The practical response is to draft child terms so they read as a considered arrangement rather than a trade: what the living arrangements are, how contact works in term time and in holidays, who consents to travel and on what notice, how school and medical decisions are taken, and what the paying parent contributes and for which categories of cost. Detail of that kind tends to be adopted. A bare waiver does not.
Signing on incomplete financial disclosure
A settlement rests on what each party believed the other had. Where property is held through a company, where shares sit in someone else’s name, or where accounts and investments are outside the UAE, the picture on the table is often the picture one side chose to present.
Two habits protect against this. First, attach a schedule to the agreement listing every asset and liability each party declares, with a valuation date, and have both sign it. It converts a vague assumption into a statement someone made. Second, agree in the document what happens if the schedule turns out to be wrong, rather than leaving that to be argued from scratch later.
Describing the result without describing the steps
“The husband shall transfer the apartment to the wife” is an outcome, not a plan. It does not say who clears the mortgage, who obtains the developer’s no-objection certificate, who pays the transfer fees, who attends the land department and by when, or what happens if the bank refuses to release the security.
Every transfer in a settlement — property, shares, a vehicle, a bank balance, closing a joint account — needs the same treatment: the acts required, the person responsible for each, the sequence, the cost allocation, and a fallback if a third party such as a lender or a developer will not play. Agreements stall on the third party far more often than on the spouse.
Ignoring residency and the practical aftermath
Where one spouse and the children hold residency sponsored by the other, the settlement is also the document that decides how that is handled. Say who sponsors whom afterwards, who pays for it, what notice is given before any cancellation, and how the children’s schooling and medical cover continue in the meantime. Leaving it unaddressed hands one party a lever that has nothing to do with the bargain either of them thought they were making.
For business owners
If one spouse owns or part-owns a UAE company, the settlement touches the corporate documents as well. Fix the valuation date and the basis of valuation in writing, deal with any transfer restrictions in the constitutional documents before agreeing to move shares, and set out a confidentiality term that covers the financial information disclosed during negotiation. A settlement that requires a share transfer the company’s own rules do not permit is a dispute waiting to start.
Related Services: Speak to our family law team about drafting and enforcing divorce settlement agreements in the UAE.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should seek professional legal advice tailored to their specific circumstances before making any decisions or taking any action based on the content of this article.
Nour Attorneys Team
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