I am married to my maternal uncle's daughter, and it happened that my father and my maternal uncle signed a document certifying a sum of money for my wife, and the document was kept with my maternal uncle, and my father has passed away.

The questioner : I am a man married to a girl who is my maternal uncle's daughter. It happened that my father and my maternal uncle signed a document certifying a sum of money for my wife, and the document was kept with my maternal uncle, who is my wife's father. My father has passed away, so I asked my maternal uncle for the document and to take the money from what he has for my wife, but he refused. So I swore an oath saying, "Either you give me the document, or your daughter is divorced." Then I left the country for here in the Kingdom to work. He has taken his daughter from my house, and she has been with her family for a year now, and I have not sent her any financial maintenance during this time. What is the ruling in this case? Did the divorce take place? And was I obligated to provide her with financial maintenance or not?

The Shaykh : The answer to that is that we say, first, we advise this questioner and others not to be lax in pronouncing divorce, and that this should not be their habit in oaths and swearing, because this matter is serious. Many scholars, if not most of them, hold that swearing an oath of divorce is a divorce in every case. Consequently, a person exposes himself to a great matter. It is obligatory for a person to be resolute always, and to have the strength to prevent what he wants to prevent or obtain what he wants to obtain without these oaths and divorces. As for the situation you described regarding your maternal uncle, your wife's father, if your intention was that if he did not pay the money, you were content to sever the kinship tie with him and desired to be away from him and his proximity, and you intended the divorce by that, then your wife is divorced unless he pays you this sum of money on which you conditioned the divorce. But if your intention was to urge him to hand over the money, and you had no desire to separate from your wife, and you want your wife and love her, then the divorce does not take place. However, if he hands over this money to you, that is fine; and if he does not hand it over, you must pay the expiation for an oath by feeding ten poor people.
In your question, you said, "my maternal uncle, my wife's father." If your maternal uncle is truly your maternal uncle, meaning he is your mother's brother, then he is truly your maternal uncle. But if you mean by "maternal uncle" that he is your wife's father and there is no kinship tie between you and him, then this naming is not appropriate. It is not appropriate for a person to call his wife's father a maternal uncle or a paternal uncle, because that may imply that he has the ruling of a close maternal or paternal uncle. Changing names to non-Shari'ah designations is not appropriate. For this reason, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: meaning, "So you call it 'Isha, for it is 'Isha in the Book of Allah." So the maternal uncle, in Shari'ah and in language, is your mother's brother, whether he is her brother from her father, or from her mother, or from both her father and mother. And the paternal uncle is your father's brother from his mother, or from his father, or from both his mother and father. As for your wife's father, he is called "Hama" (father-in-law) and "Sahar" (in-law) and the like. Yes.

The questioner : Yes.