Marriage without bride's consent invalid

Question

Good day. I was married last January of this year, but my marriage was done by force, without my consent and my parents' consent. The man was my boyfriend before, and I really do not want to marry him. What happened is that he brought me to the ruler of our barangay without my knowledge or by force. After the ceremony, I escaped from our barangay and went to another place, without seeing or living with him from the date of our marriage until now. Do I have a right to divorce him? And if yes, is it possible for me to return all the expenses that he made during the marriage ceremony? Thank you.

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.

Generally speaking, one of the conditions for the validity of the marriage contract is the woman's consent; if this condition is missing, the marriage contract is invalid and non-binding, even if it is conducted with the consent of the bride's Wali (legal guardian). 

This marriage does not need to be annulled through the ruler because it was never effective in the first place. As long as the wife insists on refusing it, it is canceled. The Maaliki scholar Al-Hattaab  wrote, "The contracts in which the condition of choice is required before conducting them, such as the case when a man or a woman is married off without his or her consent and they find out about it afterwards, then he or she has the choice to accept the contract or reject it. If they reject it, then it is annulled without a divorce because there was no marriage in the first place..." [Mawaahib Al-Jaleel]

The woman is not obliged to repay the expenses that the man spent on the marriage ceremony.

This is the general ruling in this regard. As for your specific case, we advise you to consult the Islamic entities concerned with addressing the disputes of the Muslims in your country.

Finally, a lesson should be learned from taking illegitimate relationships between non-Mahram (marriageable) men and women lightly, as they may incur grave consequences that yield nothing but regret.

Allah knows best.

-islamweb.net