The paper will explore British reforms of Ottoman family law in Iraq starting with the military occupation of Basra and Baghdad during World War I. Already in 1917, British occupation authorities issued ordinances prohibiting Shi`i, Christian, and Jewish communities from using the (recently Ottoman) Sunni shari`a courts and requiring members of these communities to follow the personal status laws of their own sectarian authorities, as adjudicated in civil courts overseen by the British military authorities and later the mandate state. While the British justified this reform in the name of protecting marginalized communities, in practice it shut down the option of forum shopping that had been available to members of non-Sunni communities in Ottoman times, who had the option of bringing personal status disputes to their own religious authorities or to the Sunni Hanafi courts. Thus, for example, Christians seeking divorce would no longer be able to go to a shari`a court but would be subject to the ban on divorce that had been adopted by most Christian sects by the start of the 20th century. The paper argues that this reform contributed to the hardening of sectarian boundaries in Iraqi society and constituted a radical reconfiguration of the relationship between family, religion, and the state.