is hers, not his.

10 – This hadith also indicates that the husband becomes part of the wife’s family and she becomes part of his, just as the Prophet said: “I have known nothing but good about my family.”

11 – It further encourages frankness in one’s dealings: you should clearly inform the other person of what rights he enjoys and what duties he owes, so that he acts with insight and knows that what you have stated is truly his due and what Allah has allotted to him.

Scholarly disagreement:

The jurists differ as to whether this ruling and preference apply to every man who already has a wife when he marries again, or only to one who has wives in addition to the new bride.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: The majority of scholars maintain that this is the woman’s right on account of the wedding itself, whether or not the man already has another wife, because the hadith is general in its wording.

The well-known view in Imam Ahmad’s school, however, is that the ruling concerns only a man who has more than one wife.