Article 89 of the civil code is Italian law's last patriarchal fossil A 1942 law continues to determine when a woman can remarry

We abolished honor killings, rehabilitating marriages, and the legal status of the male head of the household. Yet, an article of the civil code remains firmly in place to remind us that, in the eyes of the State, a woman stepping out of a marriage remains a suspect. A woman becomes a widow. A few months later, she meets someone, decides to rebuild her life, and wants to get married. She heads to the registry office only to discover she can't: she will have to wait nearly a year. If she is in a hurry, she must appear before a judge with a medical certificate proving that she is not pregnant. Had a widowed man been in her shoes, he could have walked down the aisle the very next week, no questions asked.

Remarrying after divorce or loss: double standards in the law

The rule in question is Article 89 of the Italian Civil Code. It mandates that women and only women must observe a 300-day waiting period before entering into new nuptials. While there are a few exceptions, such as when a divorce follows a formal separation, anyone who is widowed, whose marriage is annulled, or who divorces abroad falls squarely under this restriction. The official rationale is an archaic one: preventing a child from the first husband from being mistakenly attributed to the second. The issue is that today, a simple DNA test settles any question of paternity within days. Once you strip away the biological pretext, only the underlying premise remains: a woman’s body must be kept under state surveillance until it is definitively proven which man holds claim to what she carries inside.

Not an isolated glitch, but a patriarchal legacy

Anyone who thinks this is merely an odd bureaucratic relic should take a hard look at the catalogue of sexist laws this country upheld for decades. Until 1968, adultery was a criminal offense only if committed by the wife, and it was struck down by the Constitutional Court, not Parliament. Until 1975, the husband was legally defined as the head of the household, holding sole authority over where the family lived and how the children were raised. Until 1981, a man who murdered his wife, daughter, or sister in an "honor killing" got away with light sentences, while a rapist could escape prison altogether by marrying the girl he assaulted. Until 1996, rape was classified as a crime against public morals rather than against the person. And it was only in 2022 that the Constitutional Court ruled the father's surname could no longer be automatically imposed on children. Time and again, progress has arrived late, often propelled by the courts rather than politics. Article 89 is one of the last living relics of that era. Penned in the 1942 legal code under fascism, it has remained untouched ever since.

What article 89 actually tells us

A law requiring a woman to legally prove she isn't pregnant simply to exercise her right to remarry tells us that our freedom is strictly conditional. It tells us that our private lives can be submitted into official evidence. It tells us that paternity, a man's prerogative, still outweighs women’s bodily autonomy. It is the exact same logic we encounter whenever the right to abortion is challenged, whenever a survivor's outfit is scrutinized after reporting an assault, or whenever a mother is interrogated about why she didn’t leave an abusive partner sooner. The female body treated as public property: perpetually monitored, perpetually questioned.

Signs of change

In late September, Italia Viva senator Raffaella Paita tabled a single-article bill to repeal Article 89. Meanwhile, an American woman barred by this very restriction while trying to marry an Italian citizen took her case to the European Court of Human Rights, which classified the case as "high impact." The ruling is still pending. Beyond this specific clause, we urgently need a comprehensive audit of the Italian civil code and related legislation to identify and eliminate every single rule that still treats men and women differently. If Article 89 managed to hide in plain sight for over eighty years, it is hard to believe it’s the only one left.