After his death, the fiancée of a MRE seeks to obtain a posthumous marriage

Diagnosed with double cancer in 2019, Mustapha, an electrician by training, decided to marry Henriette the following year, in order to protect her from want. He had initiated the administrative procedures, but the health crisis linked to Covid-19 slowed down the momentum of this couple from Saint-Laurent-du-Var. “The medical treatment was very heavy. He was very tired, weak, and could not always move. Then with the successive confinements, we could not go to the Moroccan consulate, in Marseille, ”says Nice morning his fiancee. The couple did not receive the customary certificate that Morocco was to send them and which attested that the future husband was not already married in his country of origin until August 2021, when Mustapha died.

To read: A book-testimony on the mixed marriage between a Moroccan and a French woman

After the death of her fiancé, Henriette fights to marry the father of her two children, in order to obtain “the reversion” of his “retirement” and to respect Mustapha’s wishes. But it faces enormous difficulties. If in France, posthumous marriage is authorized, this is not the case in Morocco. The 57-year-old Laurentine sends her file to the Ministry of Justice in November 2021. The latter sends her a letter in July 2022, to explain to her that the law of the country of her late fiancé does not allow posthumous marriage. She has two months – until September 25 – to hire a lawyer and lodge an appeal. “I am in the process of putting together a file”, she delivers.