Is intention a condition for the pronouncement of divorce to take effect?

Question:
Your Eminence the Shaykh. The questioner says: What is Your Eminence’s view regarding the one who says that the pronouncement of divorce does not take effect merely by the utterance, but rather if he intends to divorce her, he goes to the court to convey his desire to divorce his wife?

Answer:
Because going to the court is for proving it, for proving it, to obtain a certificate for it. As for if he utters the divorce while his mind is with him, he is not intoxicated, and his anger has not reached the extreme intensity that alters his feelings, this is a true divorce. However, the point here is in the detail: going to the court is not a condition for it. It is not a condition of divorce to go to a court. The court is where one goes to prove the divorce and issue a certificate for it. As for effecting the divorce, it takes effect by the utterance, and it takes effect by writing. But the believer should be careful in matters and not hasten in divorce, neither by writing nor by utterance. Rather, he should be careful in matters. And if he resolves to divorce her, it is because he saw that she is not suitable for him, and he saw that it is not suitable to divorce her. He divorces her once. If he saw that the best course is to divorce her, he divorces her with one pronouncement, whether she is a young girl or in a state of pregnancy, or in a state where she is past the age of menstruation and does not get her periods.