Maintenance is due as a form of support and therefore lapses with the passage of time. The majority—including Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ahmad, according to the well-known position reported from him—hold that it is due in exchange for something in return and therefore does not lapse with the passage of time.

However, if the spouses dispute whether she has received it, some scholars within the schools of al-Shāfiʿī and Ahmad say that the woman’s word is to be accepted, because the presumption is that she has received nothing, just as when they dispute whether she has received her dower. The correct position, however, is to refer to customary practice. If the custom is for a man to maintain and clothe his wife in his home, and she claims that he has not done so, his word is to be accepted upon his oath. This is the correct position, and no other is tenable, for several reasons:

First, in the time of Allah’s Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and his rightly guided caliphs, no woman among the Companions and Successors is known to have had her word accepted in such a case. Had a woman’s word been accepted, there would have been ample incentive for women to bring such claims, as indeed happens. It is thus clear that it was an established principle among them that her word was not to be accepted.

Second, if her word were to be accepted, the man’s account could not be accepted without evidence. He would therefore have needed witnesses every time he fed or clothed her. His failure to do so would have constituted negligence on his part if he failed to have the deferred debt witnessed. Yet it is well known that no Muslim did this in the time of the early generations.