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Does a woman who was divorced by a first or second revocable divorce, whose waiting period has expired, and who married someone else and then returned to her first husband, return to him with three new divorces or with the remaining divorces?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

This issue is known as the "demolition" (al-hadm) issue. The view of the majority of scholars (Malikis, Shafi'is, and Hanbalis) is that the second marriage does not "demolish" the previous divorce, so the woman returns to her first husband with the remaining number of divorces. As for the view of the Hanafis, and a narration from Ahmad, they hold that she returns with three new divorces. There are two scenarios: First: If a man divorces his wife three times, and she marries another man and then returns to the first, he has three divorces by consensus. Second: If a man divorces his wife with a revocable divorce (talaq raj'i) and her 'iddah (waiting period) expires, then they agree to reconcile with a new contract, she returns to him with the remaining number of divorces without dispute.

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

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