“My husband divorced me thrice during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—so I went to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and he granted me neither housing nor maintenance.” This ḥadīth is recorded by Muslim. In some transmissions the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—said:

“Housing and maintenance are only for the woman whose husband still has the right to take her back.”

This opinion is likewise reported from ʿAlī, Ibn ʿAbbās, and Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh.

As for those who held that she is entitled to housing but not maintenance, they argued on the basis of the version transmitted by Mālik in his Muwaṭṭaʾ from the same Fāṭimah, wherein the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—said:

“You have no maintenance from him,”

and ordered her to complete her waiting period in the house of Ibn Umm Maktūm. That report omits any mention of waiving her right to housing; hence the general wording of the Almighty’s statement remains operative:

“Lodge them where you dwell, according to your means” (al-Ṭalāq 65:6).

They further explained the Prophet’s directive that she stay in the house of Ibn Umm Maktūm by noting that she had a sharp tongue.

Those who obliged both housing and maintenance reasoned that housing is mandated by the unrestricted wording of the verse just cited—“Lodge them where you dwell, according to your means”—and that maintenance must follow housing, as is the case for a revocably divorced woman, a pregnant woman, and the marriage bond itself.

In sum: wherever housing is required by the Law, maintenance is likewise required.

It is related that ʿUmar—may Allah be pleased with him—said of this report of Fāṭimah, “We shall not abandon the Book of our Prophet and his Sunnah because of the statement of a woman,” alluding to the Almighty’s words, “Lodge them where you dwell, according to your means” (al-Ṭalāq 65:6). Moreover, the well-known practice of the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—was to require maintenance wherever housing is due.

Therefore, the sounder course in this issue is either to hold that she is entitled to both—upholding the plain sense of the Qur’an and the established Sunnah—or to restrict that general sense by the ḥadīth of Fāṭimah just mentioned. Separating the obligation of maintenance from that of housing is difficult, and its difficulty lies in the weakness of the supporting evidence.

You should know that the Muslims unanimously agree that a waiting period (ʿiddah) applies in three situations: divorce, death, and when a slave-woman chooses herself after being emancipated. They differed concerning annulments, though the majority require it.

Since the discussion of ʿiddah here touches on the rulings of widowhood, we shall mention them. The Muslims are agreed that the waiting period of a free woman married to a free man is four months and ten nights, in accordance with the Almighty’s words:

“They shall wait, keeping themselves, for four months and ten nights” (al-Baqarah 2:234).