The Ruling on Making Divorce Conditional and the Expiation for an Oath

Question:
I am married, and on one occasion, and on one occasion, I had a quarrel with my wife in Egypt. I swore an oath of divorce that she would not go to her father’s house unless I was with her, meaning she would not go alone or even in my absence. After that, I learned from my father, after I had traveled to the Kingdom, that she had gone to her father’s house without my knowledge. However, to confirm this, I called her on the telephone in Egypt and learned from her that she had gone to her father’s house for her sister’s wedding, but she told me that she had only gone to her father’s house and did not enter the house; she sat outside the house. What is my position regarding my wife now? Is she now considered forbidden to me, or is it obligatory for me to pay the expiation for the oath? Guide us, may Allah reward you with good.

Answer:
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send prayers and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and all his Companions. As for what follows, it is not befitting for a husband to take divorce as a weapon against his wife, or for divorce to always be on his tongue, because of the harm and danger that entails for him and his wife. Divorce is a serious word if used in a place where it does not belong. If he wants to swear an oath, let him swear by Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He. If he is one who swears, let him swear by Allah and be firm. As for what the questioner mentioned, that he said to his wife, “If you go to your father’s house, you are divorced,” there is a distinction here. If he intended the divorce, intending the occurrence of the divorce and making it conditional on her going to her father’s house, and the prohibited going took place, then the divorce takes effect on her, because it is a divorce conditional on a condition, and this condition has occurred, so the conditioned thing, which is the divorce, occurs. But it will be one divorce, if two divorces did not precede it. Then he has the right to take her back, meaning he takes back his wife and remarry her as long as she is in the waiting period. He loses one divorce. How many divorces did he say? Two?
As for if two divorces preceded it, then this divorce exhausts the count, and she is divorced from him with a major final divorce, and she is not lawful to him except after he marries another husband, if he desires, and then divorces her after he has consummated the marriage with her. But if he did not intend to effect the divorce, but rather intended to prevent his wife from going, and she went, the scholars of knowledge differed on this with two opinions. Some said that the divorce takes effect like the first case, and that it is a conditional divorce that takes effect. And some said, no, this follows the course of an oath, because he did not intend to effect the divorce with it, but rather intended to prevent his wife from going with it, as if he had sworn by Allah against her. And Allah the Exalted said: Whoever does not find [the means], then fasting three days. you have held back.
And this is an oath, so it falls under this generality. And this is the stronger position: if he intended to prevent his wife from going, and did not intend to effect the divorce, and she went, then it is an oath in which he breaks it, and the expiation for the oath becomes obligatory upon him.
And in any case, with all of this, we advise and repeat that a husband should not keep divorce on his tongue and be lax with it, and then fall into difficulty, seek ways out, and put the muftis in a difficult position regarding his matter. And Allah is forgiving of it.