A legal document referring to "divorce before the..." probably means "before the court" or "before the [type of judge]." In other words, "before" here means "devant," not "avant."

The fact that Section 66 of Kenya's Marriage Act is about civil marriages -- i.e. marriages that began with a civil ceremony, not a religious one officiated by an Imam (Muslim marriages are covered by a different divorce law in Kenya) -- makes it even more likely that "before the AM" means "before the court or judge." In Kenya, Muslim divorces are handled by religious authorities; civil divorces are handled in civil courts.

And it so happens that the judges who hear civil divorce cases in Kenya are called magistrates. Section 2 of the Marriage Act defines "court" as "a resident magistrate's court established under Section 3 of the Magistrates' Courts Act," so when the Marriage Act says "court" (as it does in sections dealing with divorce), it means a magistrate's court.

That's what Section 66(2) is referring to: "A party to a marriage... may only petition the court for... the dissolution of the marriage on the following grounds..." That's the section of the Marriage Act that's at issue in the source text here.

So AM is almost certainly an abbreviation for some type of magistrate. However, although many countries have Assistant Magistrates and some have Associate Magistrates, I was not able to find anything indicating that Kenya does. That makes me lean towards leaving the abbreviation as is, and letting the client know that it likely refers to the magistrate or magistrate's court.

Sources:

Kenya Marriage Act (2014) -- this is the version of the Act that covers grounds for civil (non-Muslim) divorce in Section 66. The previous version of Kenya's Marriage Act didn't have a section 66, so this must be the one they're referring to. An attempted link to a full PDF of the Act is below, but if it doesn't work, here are highlights of the Act: http://kenyalaw.org/kenyalawblog/highlights-of-the-marriage-...


Marriage Act link that hopefully works: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...