Part of the series: Women Founders in Indonesia
Current as at 22 July 2026.
In September 2012, Ike Farida paid in full for an apartment in Jakarta. She never received it. The developer cancelled the sale, and the reason was not the price. Farida is an Indonesian lawyer who runs her own firm in Jakarta. She is also married to a Japanese national, and she and her husband had signed no prenuptial agreement. On that ground alone, the developer refused to hand over a home she had bought and paid for. “After paying in full, the apartment was never delivered, and the purchase was cancelled unilaterally because my husband is foreign and we lack a marriage agreement,” she told the court record.
Farida did not accept it. She took the Marriage Law and the Basic Agrarian Law to the Constitutional Court, challenging the provisions that had turned her marriage into a bar on owning property in her own name. In 2016 she won. The Court’s Decision 69/PUU-XIII/2015 changed how every married couple in Indonesia can arrange what they own, and it did so because one woman was refused a flat she had already paid for.
Her fight was over an apartment. The same rule governs a woman’s shares in the company she builds. This instalment asks who owns a business, in law, when its founder is married, and how a woman keeps that business in her own name. We name no founder’s marriage here, because that is private to her. Farida’s case is different, because she made it public herself, all the way to the Constitutional Court, and the change she won belongs to everyone who comes after her.
What the law makes shared
The 1974 Marriage Law, amended in 2019 by Law 16 of 2019, sorts a married couple’s property into two kinds. Property acquired during the marriage is joint property, harta bersama, under Article 35. Property a spouse brought into the marriage, and anything received during it as a gift or an inheritance, stays that spouse’s own, harta bawaan, under the same article. That default applies to almost everything a couple builds together during the marriage, including a company formed in one spouse’s name.
Two further articles decide what a person can do with the joint property. Under Article 36, neither spouse may deal with it without the other’s agreement, so a sale, a pledge or a transfer of a joint asset needs both signatures. Under Article 37, on divorce the joint property is divided according to the law that applies to the couple, which in practice is often an equal split. An asset a woman earned, and put in her own name, can still be counted by the law as half her spouse’s, and she may be unable to deal with it on her own.
Why a foreign spouse changes everything
For most couples the shared-property rule is a question of consent and division. When one spouse is a foreign national, it becomes a bar on ownership itself. A foreign citizen cannot own freehold land in Indonesia, the title known as Hak Milik, which the Basic Agrarian Law reserves for Indonesian citizens. Where an Indonesian is married to a foreigner with no agreement to separate their property, the joint-property rule treats the Indonesian spouse’s land as owned by both, which would give the foreign spouse an interest the law does not permit. The Indonesian spouse can then be unable to obtain freehold or the right to build, Hak Guna Bangunan, and land acquired in that position has to be given up within a year under Article 21 of the Basic Agrarian Law.
This is the bar Ike Farida met. She is an Indonesian citizen, entitled to own property in her own country, and the shared-property rule treated her Japanese husband as a co-owner of whatever she bought, which produced a title he could not lawfully own, so the developer treated her as unable to buy at all. For a woman founder in a marriage across nationalities, the effect depends on which spouse is the foreign national. If she is the Indonesian spouse, the rule can stop her owning land or a building in her own name. If she is the foreign spouse, her Indonesian husband meets the same bar, and her own business can be drawn into a shared pool she did not intend to create.
What it means for a woman’s shares
A business a woman founds and funds after she marries is joint property in the same way as a flat or a bank balance, even though the company is in her name and she runs it day to day. Selling the shares, pledging them to a lender, transferring them, or bringing in an investor can require her spouse’s agreement, because a dealing in joint property needs both spouses under Article 36. On a divorce, the shares can be counted in the pool to be divided, so a business built through years of a woman’s work can be split as though it were a shared savings account. A bank or an investor running proper due diligence will ask whether the founder can deal with her own shares alone, and the honest answer, with no agreement in place, is that she may not.
None of this depends on the marriage going wrong. It applies on the good days as much as the bad ones, every time the company needs a decision that touches ownership. A founder who wants to raise a round, admit a co-owner, pledge her shares or transfer them discovers that she cannot act alone, because the agreement that would make those shares hers was never signed.
The agreement Farida won for everyone
A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement is the instrument that changes the default. In Indonesian law it is a marriage agreement, a perjanjian perkawinan, made under Article 29 of the Marriage Law. A couple may agree in writing to keep their property separate, so that what each spouse earns and owns stays their own, free of the other’s claim and free of the consent requirement. An agreement of this kind lets a woman own her shares and her other assets in her own name, and deal with them without a second signature.
For most of the law’s life such an agreement could be made only before or at the wedding, as a prenuptial agreement. A couple already married, who had not known to sign one, were shut out. That was the position Farida attacked, and the position the Constitutional Court moved. In 2016 the Court read Article 29 to allow the agreement to be made during the marriage as well, as a postnuptial agreement, so long as both spouses consent. A couple married for twenty years without an agreement can now make one. The change is the reason a woman who married before she knew any of this is not left without a remedy.
An agreement has to be done properly to have effect. It is executed before a notary and recorded with the authority that registered the marriage, and an agreement that is not registered does not bind a third party such as a bank, a buyer, a lender or the land office.
The women who backed her
Farida was not alone at the Constitutional Court. She was supported by PerCa Indonesia, the mixed-marriage association, Masyarakat Perkawinan Campuran, founded in 2008 and now numbering close to 2,000 members across eight regions, which works through advocacy, member education, consultation and legal support. The organisation exists because thousands of Indonesian women married to foreign nationals had met the same bar over the property they could not own in their own names.
Its members describe a gap between the law on the page and the counter at the land office. “Good rules have been set, but once you go to take care of those legal matters, the implementation in the field is often disorderly,” the organisation’s head, Juliani Luthan, has said. One member, Indah Purnamasari, put the founder’s version of the point directly. “A lot of women nowadays are settled with their own built-in assets,” she said. “Although there is a law of property to support us, I now grasp a marriage agreement that can further strengthen our rights.” The women who pushed the case were not asking for a favour. They were asking to own, in their own names, what the law already said was theirs.
Owning it in your own name
A woman has several lawful routes to owning in her own name, and the right one depends on her situation. Citizenship is one. A foreign founder who naturalises, as the fashion founder Susanna Perini did earlier in this series, owns property in Indonesia as a citizen rather than as a foreigner. Naturalisation removes the nationality bar, though it does not by itself separate what a marriage has already made joint. A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement is the instrument that does that, and for most married founders it is the tool that fits, whether it is signed before the wedding or, since 2016, during the marriage.
The purpose of the agreement is control that does not depend on a second signature. With property separated, a woman founder owns her shares and the rest of her assets, land included, in her own name. She deals with them without seeking consent each time, and she raises finance on her own account, because the ownership is clear on the register a bank or an investor reads. Whether a prenuptial or a postnuptial agreement fits, and what it should say, depends on the couple’s own facts and on the property they already own, so we set out the position for a named person rather than reading a rule in the abstract.
The part we play
None of this is the work a founder set out to do. We draft the prenuptial or postnuptial agreement for a notary to execute as a deed, we check how it works against the company’s share register and any land the couple owns, and we time the recording so the position is clean before she raises finance or sells. Where a couple is already married, we use the postnuptial route the Constitutional Court opened, and we make sure the agreement is registered. Our founder, Tracy Wilkinson, hears what a founder is protecting, the business she built and the people who depend on it, and she says the hard thing early, that ownership in name only is not ownership a bank or a court will treat as hers. The lawyers and notarial specialists on our team put the agreement and the records in place, so a woman owns what she built and is free to run it. She does what she loves. We look after the rest.
She does what she loves. We look after the rest.
If you are building a business and you are married, the question of who owns it in law is one to settle before a bank or a buyer asks it for you. Speak with our team, and we will set out your position and what, if anything, to put in place.
Our team is your team.
This article is general information current as at 22 July 2026. Family, property, company, and tax rules change, and the position for any person depends on her own facts, so obtain advice for your own situation before you act. It is not legal, tax, or financial advice, and it does not create an advisory relationship or reach any conclusion on a particular reader’s position.
Quoted statements are reproduced from the published sources cited, and translated quotes are given in the wording of the cited source.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does everything I earn during my marriage belong to my spouse too?
Property acquired during the marriage is joint property under Article 35 of the Marriage Law, owned by both spouses. Property you brought into the marriage, and anything you receive during it as a gift or an inheritance, stays your own. A marriage agreement can change this position.
Can I sell my company shares, or use them as security, without my spouse’s consent?
If the shares are joint property, a dealing in them needs both spouses under Article 36, so selling or pledging them can require your spouse’s consent. Shares that are your separate property, or shares covered by a marriage agreement that separates property, are yours to deal with on your own.
What is a marriage agreement, and can I still make one after we are married?
A marriage agreement, a perjanjian perkawinan under Article 29, is a written agreement in which spouses set the ownership of their property, usually to keep each spouse’s property separate. It could once be made only before or at the wedding. Since the Constitutional Court’s 2016 decision in the Ike Farida case, it can also be made during the marriage, as a postnuptial agreement.
Does the agreement have to be notarised and registered?
Yes. It is executed before a notary and recorded with the authority that registered your marriage. An agreement that is not registered does not bind a third party such as a bank or a buyer, so registration is the step that gives it effect against the outside world.
I am married to a foreign national. Can we own land in Indonesia?
A foreign citizen cannot own freehold land, which is reserved for Indonesian citizens. With no marriage agreement, the joint-property rule can prevent the Indonesian spouse from obtaining freehold or the right to build as well, and land acquired in that position has to be given up within a year under Article 21 of the Basic Agrarian Law. A marriage agreement that separates property lets the Indonesian spouse own land in her own name.
Does a marriage agreement protect my business if we divorce?
If the agreement separates property, your shares are your own and are not part of the pool divided on divorce. With no agreement, shares that are joint property can be counted in that pool. On divorce the joint property is divided according to the law that applies to you, under Article 37.
Will bringing in an investor be affected by any of this?
An investor’s due diligence checks that a founder can deal with her own shares. If the shares are joint property, the investor can require your spouse’s consent to the transaction. A registered marriage agreement that makes the shares your separate property removes that step.