i got married before 2 months.the dowry between the 2 parties was decide to be a certain amount of money.at the time of writing marriage contract the sheikh was informed by my uncle to write the amount which was decide as dowry.but the father of my husband told sheikh to write a different amount of dowry which was much less than what was decided .the sheikh did not tell us about the change of amount and he wrote the lesser amount .all of this took place in one sitting in a room.the sheikh who was writing the contract did not inform my father about the change in dowry.my father and me did not know till long time about this cheating in contract regarding dowry. now i want to know what is my legal dowry...is it the amount which was actually decided between the two parties before writing contract or is it the amount written on marriage contract without our knowledge which is much less...

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.

You deserve the amount that you had agreed upon and not the lesser amount that the registrar wrote as a way of cheating and deceiving you. But does the husband admit the first agreement or does he rather deny it and claim that the agreement had been made according to what the registrar wrote?

Therefore, according to this last probability, which is that the husband denies the first agreement, then you should resort to a Sharee’ah judge because the issue has become a matter of denial and dispute, so it is a Sharee’ah court that should settle it.

Allaah Knows best.