Q: My husband suffers from a serious mental illness. He has a bipolar disorder which means that he goes into both manic and depressive episodes. He was diagnosed by a psychiatrist in Decembwr 2018 and is on medication for it.
We have been married for 6 and a half years, and we have 3 young children together. Our marriage was very good alhamdullilah until about a year ago when signs of his illness began.
When he is manic, he has lots of rage, he has no impulse control and behaves in a way completely out of character. He says strange things and treats everyone very badly. He can hallucinate and become paranoid. His condition has been getting worse.
A few nights ago, we had a big fight because he was saying terrible things to me by text and I was very upset. All of a sudden he said he will divorce me, if not tonight then he will do it tomorrow. He has never said anything bout divorce before. I was so upset I drove straight to his parent’s house where he was and I went to him and said ‘you want to divorce me? then ok, do it’! At the time he was sitting with his brother who said that he was saying strange things to him before I arrived which did not make any sense and he had been trying to calm him down. His family pulled me from the room before he could respond to me, but he went into a rage and ran in the room to me and then he said talaq 3 times. He was highly agitated, screaming at everyone and swearing at me going crazy saying things he has never said before. He went crazy at all his family and continued to act manic and agitated. This was at his parent’s home in front of his family. I left the house.
Since then, in the last few days his behaviour and psychosis got so much worse he was having delusions and going completely crazy to the point he was taken by police and has now been locked in a mental health facility. They found out that he had stopped taking his medication about a week ago because he believed it was killing him, and also that his medicine dosage has been massively insufficient so they immediately doubled it. He has now gone into a depressive state and is crying constantly and talking about self harm.
Now I need to know if our divorce is valid or not. He was very obviously not in his right mind when he said it, he was enraged, off his medication and having an extremely paychotic manic episode at the time. He also previously never expressed any desire for divorce, but if it was a valid divorce then I need to know.
A: It has not taken place.
And Allah Ta’ala (الله تعالى) knows best.
Answered by:
Mufti Ebrahim Salejee (Isipingo Beach)