Does a woman take the word of her husband on that he has been given a fatwa that a Bid‘i divorce does not count? My father asked my husband to divorce me, so he reluctantly wrote on a piece of paper that I am divorced, but I was menstruating. So when I told my husband, he said that he would find out. Then, six months later, he said that I am still his wife and that the shaykh told him that the Bid‘i divorce does not count. Is this true? Am I still married to him?

All perfect praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad, sallallahu ʻalayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.

The fatwa which we adopt at Islamweb is that the Bid‘i divorce counts. This is the opinion of most scholars, contrary to that of Ibn Taymiyyah and the scholars who followed his opinion. Please refer to fatwa 289207.

When a Muslim consults a reliable scholar whose religiosity and knowledge he trusts and he gave him the fatwa that the Bid‘i divorce does not count, then there is no harm on him to act upon his fatwa.

Accordingly, as long as your husband has consulted scholars and they gave him the fatwa that his divorce does not count and he felt content with the correctness of this fatwa, then there is no harm on him to act upon it, and there is no harm on you to act upon it as well.

It should be noted that the scholars held different opinions regarding the written explicit divorce; some held that it is the same as the verbal explicit divorce, while others considered it a metaphor of divorce that does not count except if the husband had the intention to issue divorce. Please refer to fatwa 89894.

Allah knows best.