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What is the Sharia ruling on retrieving the mother's gift (gold necklace) that the second wife gave, given that the divorce occurred before consummation, and does the wife's previous work and the husband's pledge to compensate her financially affect this ruling?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

The default rule is that a donor is not permitted to retract their gift, except for a parent in what they give to their child. However, if the mother gifted the necklace to the wife because of the marriage, she has the right to retract her gift as long as the marriage has ceased. For anyone to whom something is gifted or given due to a reason, that gift is established with the establishment of the reason and ceases with its cessation. If the payment was made before the marriage contract, the payer gets back everything they paid. The same applies after the contract if he divorces before consummation or if he dies, unless she is the one who dies. There is no retraction after consummation. In case of dispute, the decisive authority is the Sharia court.

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

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