Judicial Reasoning on Children’s Lineage in Fasid Marriages: Reconciling Islamic Law and Indonesian Marriage Law

Abstract

The legal status of children born from fasid marriages reveals a tension between Indonesian marriage law and Islamic legal doctrines governing lineage (nasab). This issue is illustrated by Decision No. 7/Pdt.P/2022/PA.Talu, where the judges reached different conclusions on a child’s lineage after a marriage was contracted while the mother remained legally bound to her previous husband. This study examines the judicial reasoning underlying the dissent and evaluates how Indonesian positive law and Islamic jurisprudence regulate the consequences of fasid marriage for children’s legal status. Using normative legal research with statutory and conceptual approaches, the study analyses the Marriage Law, the Compilation of Islamic Law, relevant judicial principles, and Islamic doctrines of fasid marriage, firāsh, and nasab. The findings show that the judicial disagreement concerned not only the validity of the parents’ marriage but also competing approaches to the relationship between marital validity and lineage protection. Indonesian law regulates marriage validity, annulment, and children’s status but provides no sufficiently specific standard for determining lineage arising from fasid marriages. Islamic jurisprudence, however, recognises circumstances in which an irregular marriage may still produce legal consequences for nasab. The case therefore exposes a normative gap between marital invalidity and the protection of children’s legal status. This study argues for a clearer doctrinal framework that separates the legal consequences of an invalid marriage from the independent determination and protection of children’s lineage and civil rights, thereby strengthening legal certainty and the best interests of the child.