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Does the wife get divorced if the husband swore by triple divorce not to drink alcohol, then drank it?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

If you conditioned your wife's divorce on drinking alcohol, and then you drank it, the fatwa we adopt is that you have broken your oath and your wife is divorced with three pronouncements. She is irrevocably divorced from you (Baynunah Kubra), and she cannot return to you until after she marries another man, he consummates the marriage with her, then he separates from her, and her 'iddah (waiting period) from him expires. Some scholars hold the view that swearing by divorce, when the intention is not to effect divorce but rather to threaten, is akin to swearing by Allah, thus requiring an expiation for an oath (kaffarat yamin) and not resulting in divorce. Also, a divorce pronounced three times is counted as a single divorce. However, if you swore by Allah to abandon drinking alcohol, and followed that with a promise to divorce your wife if you drank alcohol, this is a mere promise that does not result in divorce, and you are only obligated to offer aniation for an oath.

Swearing by divorce or other oaths to abandon sins is not a sound approach. The correct path is to seek Allah's help and offer sincere repentance (tawbah nasuh) for drinking alcohol.

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

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