of his generosity.

2 – The report further shows that whoever is responsible for spending must begin with the dependents he is obliged to maintain; he should not rush to give charity to distant people while neglecting the close relatives for whom he is answerable.

3 – It also indicates that a wife’s maintenance is the most binding financial obligation upon a man after his own basic needs, for the wife is in a state of confinement with him, as the Prophet ﷺ said, “They are captives in your hands,” meaning prisoners.

4 – It follows that if a husband cannot provide for his wife, he must separate from her—either by divorce, by khulʿ, or by annulment—according to her wish and request. Al-Rawḍ al-Murbiʿ states: “If the husband becomes insolvent with respect to food, or insolvent with respect to clothing, or with part of the food and clothing, or with lodging, she is entitled to annul the marriage with her insolvent husband.”

5 – This is supported by the statement of Saʿid ibn al-Musayyib ⦗997⦘ concerning a man who cannot find the means to support his family—that they are to be separated—as well as by the report from ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ⦗998⦘ in which he wrote to the commanders of the armies about men who had stayed away from their wives: they were to compel those men either to spend on them or to divorce them, and if they divorced, they were to send full maintenance for the entire period during which they had kept their wives waiting. These two traditions indicate that when a husband is unable to provide maintenance, the wife has the right to annul the marriage.

Scholarly disagreement:

The jurists disagreed over whether a woman may annul her marriage if her husband is unable to support her.

The three Imams—Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad—maintained that separation is effected between them at her request. This view is also reported from ʿUmar, ʿAlī, Abū Hurayrah, Saʿid ibn al-Musayyib, al-Ḥasan, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Rabīʿah al-Raʾy, Ḥammād, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī, Isḥāq, and Abū ʿUbayd.