ABSTRACT
Customary law is a living law that grows and develops in the midst of society in accordance with the development of that society. Batak society is a patriarchal one with a patrilineal kinship system. The kinship system in a patrilineal society also affects the status of widows and daughters. The position of widows according to adat is based on the principle that women as foreigners are not entitled to inherit. The patrilineal community contains the provision that if widows are integrated into their husbands’ relatives’ families, the widow can settle in that community and earn a living. However, if the widow separates herself from her husband’s relatives by remarrying outside of her husband’s relatives, the widow will never inherit the property of her husband. Boys have dominance over girls and are very influential on the status of divorced widows in Batak society. The aforementioned provisions become customary law applicable wherever the Batak Toba community is located and are a form of injustice toward women and divorced widows in the Batak Toba community. If the legal settlement is done through a formal law, it would clearly be in conflict with customary values. Through the constructivism paradigm and sociolegal research approach, the author aimed to thoroughly examine the issue of protection of women and divorced widows within the Toba Batak customary law.. The benefits of this research include providing a means to generate new ideas related to the implementation of customary law development in a gender perspective. The patriarchal culture sis so strongly embraced by the Batak Toba community that it gave birth to the normativity that divorced widows are placed in a lower position than those who are not widows. A divorced widow is afforded protection through the renewal of customary law, the Treasure, which gives her the authority to manage the inheritance of her husband without any interference from the husband’s relatives as long as the she does not remarry. Joint Treasure gives the widow the power to own the estate without any interference from the family or relatives of the husband even if she remarries. For protection of divorced women on the death of their husbands on the basis of the certainty of customary law, the government should immediately conduct a judicial revision of Law No. 1 of 1974 to clarify the status and rights of divorced widows . Social engineering in the adat customary law as related to the protection of divorced widows is based on the premise that elders should practice tolerance toward divorced widows to determine their lives after the death of their husbands without being shackled by an “honest” or sinamot marriage imposed by men to women or relatives.
