Legal and Judicial Study of the Wife’s Right to Imprisonment in case of the Husband’s Insolvency

Document Type : Research Article

Author

• Ḥakīma Shāhidī ‘Alīābād

10.22067/fiqh.v0i0.11582

Abstract

There is no doubt in the existence of the right to imprisonment in the marriage (nikāḥ) for the wife. That is to say, the wife is entitled to refuse submission until receiving all her dowry in case it is urgent (mu‘ajjal). The question arises here as to what the extent of this right to imprisonment is. Does it merely apply to specific submission or does it include general submission, as well?
If a husband is insolvent and cannot pay the dowry and is not able to pay all of it at once and pays it by installments by order of the court of justice, some believe that by receiving the first installment, the wife no longer has the right to imprisonment; whereas, some have not accepted this view and this issue has become problematic in relation to sumptuous dowries, which would take years to pay off. In this research, we have reviewed the viewpoints of the jurists and scholars on this issue.

Keywords

• wife
• husband
• dowry
• right to imprisonment
• insolvency

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