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Fatwa CenterDivorced his wife three times the first of which was an innovative one
Question
Please!! I beg your help and advice on my issues Asalaaam Alaykum wa rahmatullah taala wa barakatuh. I had divorced my wife in the time of purity which we had physical marital relationship / had sexual intercourse. And after few weeks she travelled going to her home country and before travelling she asked me to write her a paper to confirm her divorce, which I did write and when she was in her home country she went to a court and made an official divorce certificate(this she did without consulting me). After a period of almost six months she returned to the country where I was and we meet and re-marry again and after one year of being in marriage we divorced again and re-marry again after one year of our second divorce and now we are divorced again for the third time after being in marriage of the third period for more than four years. But we heard that our first divorce is totally laying in the category of Talaq bidaa, because I divorced her in the purity which we had a physical marriage act (sexual intercourse) which according to some Islamic scholars is not counted as a valid divorce (talaq). We both love each other but circumstances drive us where we are today (apart) and we have three children together of the age between 1.5yrs and 8.5yrs.We believe we have realize our mistake. Do we have the opportunity of being together before the woman being married by another man? - Can we be wrong (doing haram) to follow the explanation of those scholars whom consider the divorce pronounced in an unclean purity void/invalid and re-marry again? - And if the first one was not valid can we say that all are invalid since we start to count from one and not two (as the second one was due to the outcome of the first one). - If the first divorce was not valid is it necessary to re-marry her or can I just consider it did not happen and say we are still married. Please help me and I need your advice in this matter.. May ALLAH guide us towards HIS mercy and forgive our sin
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.
If a husband divorces his wife while she was in a state of purity in which he had sexual intercourse with her, then it is considered an innovative divorce [not according to the Sunnah] and the majority of the scholars are of the view that it takes place while some scholars are the view that it does not take place. The view that we adopt here in Islamweb is the view of the majority of the scholars. So, if you had divorced your wife a first divorce while believing in the opinion of the majority of the scholars that divorce takes place when the wife is in a state of purity during which her husband had sexual intercourse with her, then it is not permissible for you to act according to another opinion about the same issue as stated by the majority of the scholars; rather, it is a consensus of the scholars. For more benefit, please refer to Fataawa 134905, 150947 and 85415.
On the other hand, if a husband initiates divorce to his wife, it takes place regardless whether or not it has been authenticated (by the authorities). Moreover, if a wife becomes irrevocably divorced from her husband (with major separation, i.e. divorced three times), she does not become permissible for him unless she marries another man a true marriage and he consummates the marriage with her and then he divorces her or dies.
Even if we presume that your first divorce did not take place, this has nothing to do with the second and third divorces, so each one of them has its own separate ruling; for example, we would not rule that the second and third divorces were ineffective because the first one was ineffective. Rather, the third divorce will become a second divorce and subsequently the husband may take back his wife without a new contract [if she is still in her waiting period] or in case her waiting period expired, he cannot take her back except with a new contract. For more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 82541.
Finally, we advise you to take your case to a trustworthy Islamic Centre in your country and expose the issue to them, and we warn you against taking the issue of divorce carelessly, as divorce is neither the only solution for marital problems nor the first solution for them. Indeed, we are astonished how a husband who loves his wife and had children from her hastens to utter the word of divorce, so how come a husband who loves his wife treats her like this?
Allaah Knows best.
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