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Fatwa CenterWife's right to jewelry and dowry items after divorce
Question
Salam
If someone provides alot of the dowry and many stuff to his wife including jewellery etc. After a month or so they don't get together, and he asks her to take all jewellery and stuff away. Then he sends her back to her home. If they have to divorce, 1.Is it right that the jewellery which he had bought for his wife is not given to her after divorce?
2. And the dowry things brought by the wife will have to be returned or not?
please clear me. Thankyou
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
If a husband divorces his wife after having consummated the marriage with her, then she deserves the full dowry. As regards the jewelry and other things that the husband had given to his wife, then there are two cases:
1- If these things are according to the customs part of the dowry, then the ruling of dowry applies to them.
2- If a husband gives these things to her as a gift, then if she possessed them and disposed of them as their owner, then they become her property, in which case, it is not permissible for him to take this gift back from her.
3- In case he lent them to her so that she would beautify herself to him, then she is obliged to give them back to him if he asks for them.
On the other hand, a woman is not religiously obliged to give a dowry to her husband, and if this is part of the customs, then this custom is void and the husband has no right to this money. However, if it is given as a gift, then the same details which we have already mentioned above about the gift would apply to it.
Finally, it should be noted that if there is a dispute over the ownership of the home furniture [belongings], then it will have a different ruling, which is that if according to the customs some furniture belongs to the husband, then it belongs to him, and if according to the customs some furniture belongs to the wife, then it belongs to her; however, the one whom the custom gives right to the furniture, should make an oath (that it is his/hers). Nonetheless, the furniture about which the custom does not say to whom it belongs, then it belongs to the husband, but he should make an oath as well.
Allaah Knows best.
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