If the spouses disagree as to whether divorce has happened or not, then what counts is the husband’s word, unless the wife can produce proof

Question: 229507

My wife believes that I divorced her, but in reality I did not. In anger, I sent her a text saying Wallahi you are on your last divorce, but I had the intention of scaring her, not divorcing her. Then I sent another text saying ‘I divorce you’, with the same intention of scaring her. She refuses to come back to me because she thinks she is irrevocably divorced. I try to explain to her that a written divorce does not count unless the man had the intention of divorce, which I did not. She does not believe me. She claims that I had the intention of divorce and calls me a liar.

Is a woman obliged to believe the husband that he did not have the intention of divorce? Or is it permissible for her to argue that he did have the intention – and not return to him?

She insists on going to people of knowledge to seek the ruling on the validity of the divorce without me. When a scholar gives her the general advice that ‘if he divorced you three times then you become haraam for him’ – she says this is sufficient for her and stays away from me. I tell her we must both go together to a person of knowledge, so he can study what happened between us in detail, and give a ruling based on both our arguments. She refuses and says she is happy with what the scholar told her. Is this permissible for her to look for a ruling like this?

Now she is talking to another brother. If she gets married to him in this state, without me giving her a legitimate divorce, is her new marriage valid?

Summary of answer

Conclusion: If the spouses disagree as to whether divorce has happened or not, then what counts is the husband’s word, unless the wife can produce proof to support what she says. And Allah knows best.

Praise be to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah and his family.

Firstly:

If the matter is as you describe, that you wrote these
messages to your wife without intending that divorce should happen – rather
it was with the intention of threatening or scaring her – then no divorce
has taken place, as has been explained previously in fatwa no.
72291.

Secondly:

If a woman claims that her husband has divorced her, and the
husband denies it, then what counts is his word, unless the wife can produce
proof, which is two witnesses of sound character, as has been explained in
detail, with mention of the scholars’ views, in fatwa no.
175181.

Thus it is known that your wife is still married to you, and
is not divorced from you, based on what you have mentioned.

So what she must do is fear Allah, may He be exalted, and
comply with the rulings of sharia, which indicate that what counts with
regard to whether there was an intention that divorce should happen or not
is the word of the husband, as we have explained above.

If the wife is uncertain about her situation, or she is
uncertain as to what her husband says about any of the details of what
happened, or she herself is not content with what you say concerning this
issue, then undoubtedly the only proper thing to do in such situations is
for you and her to go to a scholar whose knowledge and trustworthiness you
both accept, and tell him what happened between you, and accept his verdict
and fatwa concerning your case.

This woman should understand that if she marries somebody
else in this situation, then she will be committing an immoral deed, because
she is still married to her first husband and has not become separated from
him.

In that case, the fatwa of the person whom she asked will be
of no benefit, even if he is a scholar, because he gave an answer concerning
an abstract issue, without hearing both sides of the story.

Source:

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