Umm Khaled, a businesswoman who made investments in the real estate sector, recounts her bitter experience after appointing her husband as legal guardian. “I fully trusted my husband as legal guardian to look after the business firm when I traveled outside the city. At that time, my husband asked me to give him a small percentage of profit while selling any one of the properties. I readily agreed to it. Later, he also sought commission for a sale,” she said.

Umm Khaled noted that her husband continued to demand more. “Then, he demanded registration of some of the properties under his name. To that, I also agreed. But later, he refused either to sell them or return them to me. This resulted in disputes between us. He then stopped managing my business affairs, and did not allow me to replace him with another person, either from my family or outside, as the legal guardian,” she said.

The situation deteriorated to a point where she faced the prospect of losing her business which prompted her to revoke the legal guardianship. “Immediately after this move, he divorced me on the ground that he could not trust me as long as I did not trust him. He also refused to clear the financial dues that he owed to me, and that left me with no options but to pray to Allah against him,” she said. Umm Khaled is of the firm view that every businesswoman must deal with her business affairs by herself without entrusting the affairs to the legal guardian.

Wafa Salem has a similar story. “After the death of my father, my sister and I inherited a huge amount of money. Therefore, we decided to establish a big business venture. The first hurdle for starting the venture was that of the legal guardian. Our father had died and our only brother was pursuing his studies abroad,” she said.

Wafa, an unmarried young woman, said that she accepted the suggestion of her sister to appoint her husband as the legal guardian. “She assured me that his role would be that of representing us at government offices to do business related procedures, and that he would not have any direct role in running the business.” She continued, “Symptoms of his greed, however, began to come out soon. Firstly, he demanded a big monthly salary even though our business was struggling to gain ground in its initial stage. However, my sister readily agreed to give him the salary. After some time, he came forward with another demand: His share of annual profit,” she said, that too at a time, they had not even settled their debts or other financial obligations. “When we thought about canceling his legal guardianship, he threatened to divorce my sister. As a result, we decided to separate our partnership after agreeing all the terms and conditions set by her husband,” she added.

Dr. Hatoun Ajwad Al-Fasi of King Saud University said that the legal guardian issue was one of the major legal and right issues being debated in courtrooms and offices of lawyers. “It is unfortunate that a number of legal guardians exploit women by resorting to fraudulent means and cheating. The legal guardianship system that does not recognize the rights of women should be deemed as illegal. The negatives of the system were more evident than its positive factors over the past years,” she said.

During the year 2009, businesswomen from all regions of the Kingdom launched a campaign demanding abolition of the legal guardian system for businesswomen. As a result, the Ministry of Commerce responded favorably by revoking the need for businesswomen to have a legal guardian  for matters pertaining to the ministry. As far as matters concerned with other ministries, the presence of legal guardians is still a must. Whenever businesswomen draw attention of the concerned officials at these ministries to the revocation of legal guardianship by the Ministry of Commerce, they say that they have so far not received any such information or circular from the concerned authorities.

This lukewarm attitude has forced many businesswomen to relaunch the campaign a few months ago. The campaigners have stressed the need for introducing a permanent system under which any decisions taken by the Ministry of Commerce with regard to businesswomen must be applicable to other ministries also. Prominent lawyer Alaa Al-Humaidi noted that the majority of people in the society who became victims of fraudulent practices with regard to legal guardianship were businesswomen. He attributed this mainly to their ignorance about some of the laws, information and procedures, as well as their inability to do follow-up work and monitor business activities.

Referring to the precautionary measures to be taken by businesswomen against exploitation, Al-Humaidi said that women should put some restrictions to avoid the chances for exploitation or abuse of power while entrusting any of their relatives as legal guardians. “They should also be cautious not to leave any legal loopholes so that they can be protected from guardians misusing their powers,” he added.