Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:

A man pronounced one revocable divorce upon his wife. When he appeared before the witnesses, one of them told him, “Say: ‘I divorced her in return for a dirham.’” He said this, whereupon they told him, “She now has control over her own affairs and cannot return to you without her consent.” If he is prevented from taking her back, does he lose his right despite having been misled in this way, or not?

He replied:

Praise be to Allah. If he had pronounced one revocable divorce upon her, and a witness then prompted him to say that he had divorced her in return for a dirham, and he said this believing that he was acknowledging the first divorce rather than effecting another, then no divorce takes effect beyond the first, which remains revocable, not irrevocable.

If it is alleged that he made the second statement to effect a second divorce, but he says, “I said it only to acknowledge the first divorce,” and he does not know that divorce in return for compensation makes the divorce irrevocable, then his account is to be accepted upon his oath—especially since the surrounding circumstances support it. For customary practice is that, when a man divorces his wife and then appears before witnesses, he does so only for them to attest to the divorce that has already taken place.