A man proposed to a girl, and the mahr was high, but then the state set the mahr, yet his village did not comply, and he married with the high mahr, then the court asked the

The questioner : He said: I proposed to a girl from our village for marriage four years ago, where the conditions and mahr in our village are very high, reaching one hundred and thirty thousand riyals, and I married on this mentioned amount. However, what happened is that a decision was issued by the state and by the sheikhs of other villages neighboring my village to set the conditions and mahr for women, and they agreed that the amount should be fifty thousand riyals. But my village did not adhere to this, and every guardian of a girl wanted to marry her to me for one hundred and thirty thousand riyals, hoping for the money. I married on this amount because I did not find anyone from my village who would marry me for a small amount. I married and entrusted my affair to Allah. But what happened is that the court asked the guardians of the women and the men who married and those who got married to swear an oath that they had not delivered an increase above the agreement and had not taken it. They made me swear an oath, and he said to me: Say: By Allah the Mighty, and I repeated that after him until he said: and your wife shall be divorced from you. I said this, and it was not my intention to divorce, whereas in fact we had delivered an increase above the agreement. The question is: Is this considered a divorce? How many divorces does it count as? Or what is it considered?

The Shaykh : It appears that this is not considered a divorce, because the intention behind it is to confirm the news you reported, which is that you did not exceed what the government set. Therefore, it is not a divorce in that case, because if divorce is intended for urging, prohibition, verification, or falsification, it has the ruling of an oath according to the stronger opinion among the scholars. Accordingly, your wife is not divorced from you, but she is your wife. And if you were forced to take this oath, then there is no sin on you either. As for the expiation, it is not obligatory, because one of the conditions for the obligation of the oath expiation is that the oath be about a future matter. As for an oath about a past matter, there is no expiation in it, but rather there is sin if the person is lying while knowing his lie, or no sin if the person is truthful or swearing about what he believes to be the case.