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What is the ruling on obtaining a fictitious divorce certificate to be exempted from military service? Is this considered a valid divorce under Sharia? What are the resultant Sharia rulings, and what is the ruling on inheritance in this case?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

If a man writes down a divorce with his own hand, it does not take effect unless he intends it, because writing can be ambiguous. However, if someone else writes it down and the man signs it without intending divorce, then the divorce does not take effect.

This action involves several harms: - If the inheritance is distributed by the state, there is no inheritance between the spouses. But if it is not distributed by the state, the solution is for the father to have two just witnesses testify to the continuation of the marriage. With this becoming widespread among people, if one of them dies, the other inherits from them. - If Allah blesses the father with a child, it will be difficult for him to register the child, in addition to the falsehood and forgery involved in this action.

Since the divorce has not taken place, no raj'ah (reconciliation) is needed.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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