Does saying to one’s wife, ‘you are perfectly wrong for me’ count as a divorce if one did not mean what they said?

Question Summary

Does saying to one’s wife, ‘you are perfectly wrong for me’ count as a divorce if one did not mean what they said?

Answer

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate

None of what you mentioned counts as a divorce. The words ‘you are perfectly wrong for me’ do not count as a divorce.

Divorce only occurs when one says one of two types of expressions.

(1) Explicit words whose meaning is only used for divorce, such as ‘you are divorced.‘ [Quduri, al-Mukhtasar]

(2) Indirect expressions that entail the meaning of divorce and other possible meanings; such expressions are not considered divorce unless one intended divorce when saying them or the situation indicates that one intended divorce. [Quduri, al-Mukhtasar]

Your singing to your wife the above words does not meet either of the above expressions.

Hope this helps
Allah knows best
[Shaykh] Yusuf Weltch

Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Shaykh Yusuf Weltch is a teacher of Arabic, Islamic law, and spirituality. After accepting Islam in 2008, he then completed four years at the Darul Uloom seminary in New York, where he studied Arabic and the traditional sciences. He then traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he stayed for three years studying in Dar Al-Mustafa under some of the greatest scholars of our time, including Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf, and Shaykh Umar al-Khatib. In Tarim, Shaykh Yusuf completed the memorization of the Qur’an and studied beliefs, legal methodology, hadith methodology, Qur’anic exegesis, Islamic history, and several texts on spirituality. He joined the SeekersGuidance faculty in the summer of 2019.