Doubts about conditional divorce

3-1-2018 | IslamWeb

Question:

Assalaamu alaykum. A husband is unsure about his intention behind a conditional divorce and whether he meant it for a specific incident or for all such incidents that may occur in future. He predominantly thinks that he wanted to prevent his wife during a specific incident because she was purposefully disobeying him. So he conditioned divorce on her disobeying him once more. He is almost sure that the did not mean her doing that any other time in future, but he does have doubts about it. The wife did not do that thing again at that time and obeyed him. However, she may have forgotten about this and might have done that, not to anger him, but by mistake, or unconsciously. Does divorce take place then? How can one be sure whether the condition applies or not? He mostly thinks that the condition was only applicable during that fight.

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

Since the husband mostly thinks that his intention was to prevent his wife in that incident only, then his oath is restricted to that particular incident only, and he does not break his oath if his wife does what he had forbidden her from doing after that incident.

There is no need to make sure whether or not that condition is still valid, as divorce does not take effect when there is a doubt about the existence of its condition.

Ar-Ruhaybaani said, "Divorce is not effective when there is a doubt about it or when the husband has doubts about the condition upon which he conditioned the divorce."

If we assume that the husband conditioned divorce on his wife whenever she does that particular thing and then the wife did it out of forgetfulness, then the view which we adopt in this case is that divorce does not take place.

Allah knows best.