Custody and Maintenance (Ḥaḍāna & Nafaqa)
Separation & loss · Separation & loss · The child's welfare across two households
When a marriage ends, Islamic law re-centres on the child: the mother's early custody, the father's continuing duty of maintenance, and a Qurʾānic ban on using the child to harm either parent.
At a glance
| Nursing | Two years; weaning “by mutual consent and consultation” (Qurʾān 2:233) |
|---|---|
| Cost-bearing | “Upon the father is their provision and clothing, honourably” (2:233) |
| Custody order | Mother first for young children — all schools; ages differ |
| Rule of rules | “No mother shall be harmed through her child, nor father” (2:233) |
| Also written | hadana · hizanat · nafaqah · nafqa |
The Qurʾān's fullest verse on parental separation concerns the nursing infant (2:233): mothers suckle for two years, the father bears the mother's provision and clothing "honourably," no parent may be harmed through the child, and weaning is decided "by mutual consent and consultation" — a text jurists read as the charter of post-separation co-parenting: consultation is commanded, cost falls on the father, and the child may not become a weapon. Sūrat al-Ṭalāq adds the working rules: house them as you house yourselves, wages for the nursing mother, and "consult together honourably" (65:6–7).
Classical custody law (ḥaḍāna) gave the mother first right to young children — the Prophet told a mother pleading for her son, "you have more right to him so long as you do not remarry" (Abū Dāwūd) — and the schools then diverge on the age of transfer: Ḥanafīs to about seven for boys and nine for girls, Mālikīs longest of all for boys, Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs offering the discerning child a choice, Twelver Shiʿi law classically transferring earlier. Modern codes across the Muslim world have generally extended maternal custody and, increasingly, subordinated every fixed age to a single test the classical jurists themselves invoked: the welfare (maṣlaḥa) of the child.
Maintenance (nafaqa) never transfers: whoever holds custody, the father's duty to provide for his children persists — a duty the Prophet enforced even by self-help, telling Hind bint ʿUtba to take from her miserly husband's wealth "what suffices you and your child, honourably" (Bukhārī and Muslim). Guardianship of property and marriage (wilāya) remained the father's in classical law, distinct from daily care — a two-keyed arrangement that presupposes, and demands, continued cooperation between separated parents.
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Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.