Intended divorce in the future and then changed his mind
23-8-2006 | IslamWeb
Question:
As-salaam o alay kum wa rahmat Allah, I recently read about implied divorce in Islam. I needed to clarify that will this be counted as an implied divorce if a person X made an implied statement to his wife such as "go to your parents" or "get out of my life" while he was angry and at the time of making that statement his intention was that he will divorce her soon in near future (i.e. in few days or in a week or a month etc)? He did not say those statements to execute a divorce at that same moment in time and rather his intention was to divorce her in near future but later on he changed his mind (when his anger went away) and decided to not divorce her anymore. Will this be considered a divorce or not? Jazzak Allah.
Answer:
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger. We ask Allaah to exalt his mention as well as that of his family and all his companions.
If a man says to his wife some of the metaphoric expressions of divorce like "Go to your parents", or "Get out of my life", then divorce does not take place unless he intended it. As long as one did not intend to initiate divorce at the time he said any such expression, then this does not have any effect whether or not this happened when he was angry. For more benefit, please refer to Fataawa 90416 and 90531.
Finally, the following two matters should be noted:
1- During marital life one should avoid the reasons which lead to problems, and one should deal with such problems wisely when they occur. Moreover, one should avoid using the words of divorce and the like as a means of solving such problems.
2- Being angry does not prevent divorce from taking place if one initiates it, unless he is angry to an extent that he does not know what he is saying. For more benefit, please refer to Fataawa 82348 and 81843.
Allaah Knows best.