I am married to two women. Seven years ago I went to Jerusalem with my first wife and during the first two months of our six-month stay there she became pregnant. After the third month of her pregnancy we had a fierce fight and she had me put in jail in Israel. When the police came to take me to told her 'you are divorced' three times. I was released from jail after one week and returned to the US where I lived most. Five months later this wife returned to the US where she lived with her family in a different state and gave birth to a boy. I haven't spoken to her during the past five years. I divorced her in an American court, not an Islamic court. Will this divorce be considered 'irrevocable' (Bain)? Can I take her back through the American courts, or does she have to marry another husband and then be divorced in order for us to remarry? What should I do?

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds; and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.

Your saying to your wife, ‘you are divorced three times’ is a Talaq Bain, i.e. you cannot take her back unless she marries a man willingly and has sex with him. Thereafter if they divorce you may marry her after fulfilling all the conditions of a legal marriage.  Allah Says (interpretation of meaning): {And if he has divorced her (the third time), then she is not lawful unto him thereafter until she has married another husband. Then, if the other husband divorces her, it is no sin on both of them that they reunite, provided they feel that they can keep the limits ordained by Allâh…..}[2:230]. This is the opinion of the majority of Muslim scholars. 

However, some people of knowledge are of the opinion that delivering divorce three times at once is considered as only one divorce.

We would like here to inform you that the effectiveness of a divorce does not depend on its registration in an American court or even in an Islamic court; whenever it occurs it is valid regardless of its registration.  Registration is only to certify the administrative validity of a divorce, which was already effective.

Allah knows best.