Our client's husband had pronounced a religious divorce many years earlier but continued, for a long period afterwards, to refer to her publicly as his wife, asserting that he had revoked it.

This left our client without a clear or certain marital status for over a decade, despite repeated attempts to resolve the position.

Attempting to formalise the divorce

When the husband eventually agreed to have a fresh religious divorce formally recorded, a religious official attended, together with a family member acting on our client's behalf and an independent witness, and the husband pronounced the divorce formula. No certificate was issued at the time, and our client was later told that the divorce could not be certified because of a procedural issue concerning the witnesses, specifically that they were not 'just' witnesses as they did not have a beard.

A second scholar's opinion

Our client subsequently approached a different religious scholar, who reviewed the available evidence, including communications confirming that she had observed the customary waiting period following the original divorce, and confirmed that the earlier divorce was valid, issuing a certificate to that effect.

Dispute and retraction at trial

The husband disputed this and, at the final hearing, relied on a witness statement from the scholar denying that any certificate had been issued. Further evidence obtained through the litigation called the scholar's account into question, and shortly before trial the scholar filed a further statement retracting the earlier denial and confirming that the certificate had, in fact, been issued.

Resolution

The husband continued to dispute the validity of the religious divorce. The matter was ultimately resolved as part of a broader financial settlement in the English proceedings, under which our client accepted a khula divorce and released any religious-law claims she might otherwise have pursued, in order to secure certainty over her marital status.

Why this matters

By the time the matter resolved, our client had spent well over a decade unable to remarry or move on with her life. This illustrates how uncertainty over the revocability of a religious divorce can leave a person in prolonged limbo, even where a divorce has, in substance, already taken place.