All the rooms at the offices of Judy Thongori and Co Advocates are named after trees. What’s not clear is whether the trees are a metaphor for life or Judy just likes trees. (She does. And they are a metaphor of life).
Whatever the case, should you find yourself in the confines of her pristine boardroom, you will have found yourself in the same position as her former clients - most at an important junction of their lives - discussing matrimonial disputes, children’s or succession matters.
Judy started as a commercial lawyer but then an unintentional stint at FIDA opened her eyes to the great and real suffering of women and children that made her rethink the particular species of law she was barking up. “I learned that violators and bullies are a result of what they experienced growing up,” she said, “and I decided I'm doing nothing else than family law for the rest of my life.”
To speak to Judy about family law is to peek into anthropology. A bucketful of astounding wisdom and insight seems to pour from behind her hooded eyes.
A thoughtful listener, she listens with her whole body and through her you quickly learn that family law isn’t just about law, it’s about how we live with each other. And she mentions the word “court” once in an hour-long conversation, which says as much as all the names of trees in her office do.
Why does it seem like everybody is divorcing, or thinking about divorcing? Or is it just me and the people I’m hanging around?
[Chuckles] It’s widespread for sure. It's happening everywhere in society, irrespective of age factor or social background. Conflict in marriage is inevitable as long as people are married.
Of course, now people talk about divorce more than they ever did. Before people stayed in unhappy marriages because of stigma.
Now you can divorce and that won’t be the end of life. Maybe even more importantly, divorce cases are more common now because it's easier to divorce now than ever before, the court processes have become easier.
There is also a lot of information out there; people know that you can have a life after divorce. Lastly, it seems much more because people spoke less about divorce than they do now. After all, there is less stigma.
I suppose the nature of conflicts in marriage has also changed.
That, too. Completely. We are fighting over different things than before.
You must have sat with hundreds of married people in this room. What do you find to be the most common issue married people fight about now?
The lack of alignment of core values. On finances, accountability, integrity, honesty, compassion, family…But family law is just not limited to divorce.
I mostly do marital conflict; succession matters and estate planning.
I also deal with unconflicted persons, but people who are attempting to avoid conflict like estate planning which is about you taking charge of your estate so that people don't have to go through these succession processes. I do prenuptial agreements…
What drives people to get into a prenup? Is that not pre-empting the end at the beginning?
Awareness is something that I encourage very much. I’m very excited when people come here seeking services on pre-nuptial agreements because many people I speak to, especially young ladies, I tell them about the need for prenups.
They usually tell me, “But Judy, now, how do I discuss prenups when I love him and want to spend the rest of my life with him? Isn't he going to think that I’m in it for money?”
And I say, no, actually, I think that the only conversation you should have before you get married is on pre-nuptials, because you're having the courage to talk about what most couples planning a life don’t talk about, money, and investments. So many grey areas there.
Who pays for the wedding debts after the honeymoon? The man buys a car and puts it in his name. She buys a plot and puts it in her name. Can you imagine what it does to a marriage? What do people begin to feel if they haven't had that conversation before? And it's okay to have the conversation before the marriage, and it's okay for me to say, by the way, what's mine is mine and what's yours is ours.
Alternatively, I will keep my money but what we put into the pool is what's going to be shared between the two of us.
So, your expectations are met. And this does not pre-empt divorces. It just reduces conflict in the marriage.
You've been married for long - 30 years or so, if I’m not mistaken. Does that help your practice as a family lawyer?
I don't know if it does. This is a tricky one, let me tell you why. When I started to practice law, most judges tended to look down, for lack of a better word, on lawyers who were unmarried and were representing parties in marital conflict.
They used to say, ‘What do you know about marriage?’ And we used to be very defensive. I was newly married then, but I thought it was so unfair because what makes you a family lawyer is not the fact that you are married, but the fact that you're educated to become a lawyer.
I don't think that you should trust me more because I'm married. On the other hand, there is wisdom and that comes with time, age and experience.
You are conscious of the nuances at play.
Exactly! But which [holds up index finger] may also be a bias.
Senior counsel and family lawyer Judy Thongori during an interview at her office in Westlands Nairobi on September 4, 2024.
Photo credit: Billy Ogada | Nation Media Group
Many times, there is a need to just have a fresh mind of objective or maybe more neutral because I could tend to be a bit judgmental because I've lived a certain life and maybe I think that children should be brought up in a certain way.
But a young person who just came out of school could be like whatever works for you, because they have not been influenced yet, by their experience.
Do you enjoy what you do?
Oh, gosh, I love it!
Which parts do you love?
Interestingly, I got here accidentally, but I stayed by choice. I think that the most fundamental unit of society, as Article 45 of the Constitution says, is a family.
It is the basis of social order. Our factory settings are defined by how we were raised and socialised by our parents. Our value system comes from that.
Consider this; we are born male or female, and society makes us men and women because if a boy is born and he's dressed in a dress, he wouldn't know better. Vice versa.
Society has a set of rules by which they decide how girls and boys should live. It's nothing to do with their biology. It has everything to do with the social construct.
So, what am I saying? That your family determines for you who you become in terms of your value system and your vices. I call it primary socialisation. And so it’s very important to make parents aware that they are not bringing up children, they are bringing up adults.
What's your opinion on raising children in same-sex marriages? I feel like we're heading there at some point.
Oh, we are there already. I have personal values, and I also recognise that there are other values outside of mine. I also recognise that this isn't about me, it's about society, and where it's going.
I don’t believe children raised in same-sex marriages will be any worse than the children of any other relationship. Because the basic values can be taught in any marriage.
I was brought up by a single mother, and it didn't turn out too badly even though there was a sense of discrimination and stigma if not at the level it is today.
The present parent in a child’s life can impact values on the child that can make them responsible citizens.
You've dragged me into a rabbit hole. I'm just gonna follow you into it. Take a boy being raised by a single mother in an apartment in Kileleshwa who isn’t in contact with male influences for whatever reason. Or vice versa. What’s the impact of that on this boy?
So, this mother needs to be equipped to learn that she needs to be intentional about how to bring up this boy knowing that what he's seeing is his mother doing these things on her own and therefore, he will expect that it will be done by his wife/ girlfriend.
Expose him to male family, friends, male, what is it, family members, or be intentional about what you teach him. And it's the same thing with a single dad bringing up a daughter, otherwise she will expect her husband to do things her dad did.
Can you imagine these two people meeting? Their truths are all valid. Many conflicts are based on that social construct.
How important is marriage money and how does it shift its power dynamics?
That's a good question. Money should not shift the power, but it does. And this is because we are socialised to believe that the financial muscle is the man.
He's told, ‘You need to go get money so that you can marry a wife, so that she can listen to you and respect you…so that society can respect you.’
What happens when this boy marries someone more financially empowered than him? Or get more financially empowered than him during the marriage? He will imagine he isn’t being respected and that she’s looking down on him because he doesn't have the money. The socialisation, the factory setting, is deep, it doesn't matter what you do.
Will that change? Will boys be secure with financially empowered women?
These things take a long time, but they eventually change when we begin to socialise our boys, to see girls as equal partners who may be doing better financially. Someone who can support them when they are down, an equal partner.
What are you afraid of for your children?
I have a 28-year-old boy and a 26-year-old girl.
I’m afraid of them experiencing disappointment, not at work or professionally, but family-wise. Because I have seen how family conflict can define you.
The greatest potential of a human being can be whittled by a family conflict in a minute.
Your choice of partner can greatly alter the course and quality of your life. And sometimes you never know it’s the right partner.
A long time ago people used to know the family they were marrying into, that had raised them. Now young people say, I’m not marrying them, I’m marrying him. But I tell them, no you are not marrying him, you are marrying them.
It’s ‘them’ that brought them up. You are marrying their past/ socialisation. So if you meet a nice woman, you just need to look at the family that raised them to see who she is.
You mentioned earlier that you got here by accident. What’s the story?
So, when I started practising law, I was in commercial law, and I was doing well until three of my sisters in the profession- Martha Karua, Martha Koome, and Nancy Baraza - persuaded me to join Fida which changed my life.
I came across such suffering of women and children. These are things I wasn’t exposed to as a commercial lawyer. It traumatised me and made me wonder if we should put women in one corner of the globe and men in another.
So that's when I began to dig deeply into what it is that causes men to become so violent and women to become so gullible.
I dove deep into the institution called family, and I understood that if we socialise our children differently, the boys should not be hitting girls, and girls should not agree to be hit.
I learned that the bullies and violators are actually a result of what they experienced when they were growing up and I decided I'm doing nothing else than family for the rest of my life. I opened this office in 2003 and no one day has felt like work.
You should consider starting a podcast.
[Laughs] Oh really? Maybe I will.
I'd like to ask you about your dad.
Yes. So, I don't know him. I never met him at all. And in my time, you didn't ask your single mother who your father was.
My mom is still alive now, but she has dementia the conversation about my father was not something she’d have then.
Of course, I was curious about him initially and I tried to get information independently, but I didn't get very far. So, I said, I'm good.
