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Let's Control the Dowry: Put an End to Exhorbitant Demands by Greedy Would be MIL
By Mihar Dias August 2026
It begins like all great tragedies: a groom, exhausted but dutiful, books the hall, pays the caterer, and sinks his savings into the machinery of matrimony.
Enter the Mother-in-Law From Hell, armed not with blessings but with a calculator and the moral compass of a loan shark. At the twelfth hour, she demands RM25,000. https://newswav.com/A2608_cyP0O3?s=A_4rijTLF&language=en
Not for a palace, not for a yacht, not even for a lifetime supply of nasi lemak. For the privilege of marrying her daughter.
This isn’t a dowry. It’s extortion in lace. A ransom note disguised as tradition. Full disclosure: I married on a tenth of that sum, and even then it felt like haggling with a dodgy used-car dealer. Had anyone tried this RM25,000 stunt on me, elopement wouldn’t have been scandalous — it would have been sound financial planning.
The absurdity is Shakespearean. The bride gets a modest promotion — senior clerk, not CEO of Petronas — and suddenly her mother decides the groom must cough up an extra RM10,000. https://newswav.com/A2608_cyP0O3?s=A_4rijTLF&language=en
Retroactive surge pricing, like Grab during a thunderstorm. If this woman ran Shopee, every checkout would double in price the moment you blinked.
And when the groom explained his money was already sunk into deposits, she delivered her masterstroke: “If you can’t pay, don’t marry her.”https://newswav.com/A2608_cyP0O3?s=A_4rijTLF&language=en
No compromise, no discussion, just a door pointed at with mafia-boss confidence. Honestly, she’d make an excellent loan shark — minus the charm and with twice the malice.
The motive? To impress the neighbours. Because nothing screams “wealth” like bankrupting your future son-in-law before the honeymoon. This isn’t a dowry; it’s a down payment on a lie. And the groom, sensibly, refused to finance someone else’s fiction.
So what’s to be done? In the spirit of Jonathan Swift, I propose the following reforms https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2014/03/20/jonathan-swift-leo-damrosch-satire
Let's call it the Dowry Inflation Act (2026):
• National Dowry Price Ceiling: No dowry shall exceed the groom’s annual salary, unless the bride’s mother can prove she herself is worth the surcharge. Proof shall be submitted in audited tax returns, not Facebook posts.
• Mother-in-Law Licensing Board: Any woman wishing to extort a groom must first obtain a license, renewable annually, with mandatory ethics training and a course in basic arithmetic. Failure to comply results in exile to a karaoke lounge where only “It’s Raining Men” is on repeat.
• Dowry Futures Market: Since promotions apparently trigger price hikes, let us formalize the madness. Brides’ mothers may trade their daughters’ job titles like commodities. “Senior Clerk” futures will be worth RM10,000; “Assistant Manager” RM15,000. “CEO” will be priceless, but only if the groom survives the bidding war.
• Neighbourhood Illusion Subsidy: If the true motive is impressing neighbours, the government should simply issue holograms of BMWs parked outside the house. Cheaper than bankrupting a groom, and far more convincing than a dowry receipt.
• Elopement Tax Break: Any groom who flees the dowry auction shall be rewarded with a tax rebate, free nasi lemak for a year, and a medal inscribed: “I survived the Mother-in-Law Surge Pricing Scheme.”
The beauty of these proposals is their efficiency. They do not merely punish greed; they industrialize it, regulate it, and finally expose it for the farce it is. Because here’s the truth: the only thing truly promoted in this saga was not the bride, not the groom, but cynicism itself — and unlike civil service grades, cynicism requires no exam, no training, and no justification. It simply grows, like mould, wherever greed is left unchecked.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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