Does Samoa lock up careless husbands who missed the birthday of their wives? No, that's not true: local press reporting has denied the viral claim with a lawyer saying there is no such regulation on the island nation and asking that readers don't believe everything they read on the internet.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published by @gongmap on TikTok, on March 26 under the title "Why this is illegal?" with a caption reading:
Interesting illegal things in different countries - Samoa: missing wife's birthday
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Jun 8 04:08:53 2023 UTC)
According to the Samoa Observer, a Samoan-based daily, the viral claim is not true. The Observer quotes lawyer Fiona Ey who says a law used to prosecute forgetful husbands was not on the books and the Samoan daily said it found no reference to such a law in its own research of local statutes. The lawyer told the Observer:
Long and short of it - it's an apocryphal story and a great example of why you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet.
The claim that Samoan husbands who forget their wives' birthdays face jail time has been repeated by various online sites over time, including here in 2016, here and here
