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The wife’s knowledge of divorce

Answered as per Shafi'i Fiqh by Qibla.com

Answered by Shaykh Amjad Rasheed
Translated by Ustadha Shazia Ahmad

You had said in a previous answer, “the condition for a divorce to occur is that the husband pronounce one of the pronouncements of divorce that explicitly denote divorce, or something that implicitly indicates it accompanied by an intention of divorcing the woman, even if she does not know it. It is not a condition of divorce that the wife know about it.”

How can it not be a condition for the validity of the divorce that the wife know about it? In that case, what would prevent a man from hiding the fact that he has divorced her from his wife ? Is the woman then sinful if he calls her to his bed and she answers him thinking that she is still his wife? And what would be the ruling of the fetus that she carries from her divorced husband?

Answer:
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

What I previously said about it not being a condition for a woman to know that she was divorced is what was decided by the scholars. They said that the husband can independently effect divorce because divorce is not a contract [between two parties], but rather it is a type of dissolution and annulment, and the validity of an annulment is not dependent on the knowledge of the other party. This is because [of the general legal maxim that] “things that are indispensable in contracts are overlooked in annulments.”

If a man does divorce his wife without telling her and then he calls her to his bed knowing that this is forbidden for him, then he is considered a fornicator. As for her, she has committed no sin because she does not know that she is no longer his wife, so she obeyed him by giving him his right in accordance with the initial presumption [that she is still his wife].

If she is impregnated by this occurrence, then the child’s lineage goes back to her but not her husband because a child born out of wedlock does not inherit the lineage of the father.

السؤال : قلتم في إجابة قديمة التالي :” شرط وقوع الطلاق أن يتلفظ الزوج بلفظ من ألفاظ الطلاق أو ما يدل عليه مع نيته بذلك المرأة ولو لم تعلم بذلك ، فليس من شرط صحة الطلاق علم الزوجة به “. لماذا لا يشترط في صحة الطلاق معرفةُ الزوجة به ؟ ماذا يمنع الرجل من إخفائه عن زوجته أمر طلاقها منه ؟ وهل تكون المرأة آثمة إن دعاها للفراش فاستجابت ظانة أنها ما زالت على ذمته ؟ وما حكم الجنين إن هي حملت من مطلقها ؟

الجواب : ما قلتُه من عدم شرط علم الزوجة بالطلاق لصحة وقوع الطلاق هو ما قرَّره الفقهاء فقالوا : الطلاق من التصرفات التي يستقل بها الزوج ؛ لأن الطلاق ليس عقداً بل هو من باب الحلول والفسوخ وهي لا يشترط فيها علمُ المقابل لها كفسخ بقية العقود ؛ لأنه يغتفر في الفسوخ ما لا يغتفر في العقود .
أما إن كان الزوج قد طلق زوجته ولم تعلم هي بذلك ثم دعاها إلى الفراش وهو يعلم حرمة ذلك فهو زانٍ ، أما هي فليست بآثمة ؛ لأنها لا تعلم أنه صار أجنبياً عنها وتظن أنها ما زالت زوجته فأطاعته في حق له بحسب ما هو الأصل . وإن حملت المرأةُ من هذا الوطء فالولدُ منسوبٌ لها لا لزوجها ؛ فإن الولد المخلوق من ماء الزنى لا يثبتُ نسبه من الزاني .

This answer was indexed from Qibla.com, which used to have a repository of Islamic Q&A answered by various scholars. The website is no longer in existence. It has now been transformed into a learning portal with paid Islamic course offering under the brand of Kiflayn.

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