Quranic and Prophetic Foundations
The obligation of nafaqah — maintenance or financial support within the family — rests on explicit scriptural authority. The wife’s right is anchored in Quran 4:34, which describes men as qawwamun (maintainers, those who stand responsible) over women ‘because of what they spend of their wealth’, tying the husband’s authority directly to his financial liability. The decisive locus is Surat al-Talaq 65:6-7, which commands that a divorced wife in her waiting period be lodged ‘according to your means’ and not harmed, and then lays down the universal standard: ‘Let the affluent spend according to his affluence, and whoever is straitened in provision, let him spend from what God has given him; God does not burden a soul beyond what He has given it.’ From this verse the jurists derive the twin principles that maintenance is gauged by the payer’s capacity and that it is owed at the level of ma’ruf — what is customary, decent, and recognized as fitting.
The Sunnah reinforces and itemizes the duty. In the Farewell Sermon the Prophet affirmed that wives have upon their husbands ‘their provision and their clothing in a recognized manner (bil-ma’ruf).’ When Hind bint Utbah complained that Abu Sufyan was a tight-fisted man, the Prophet permitted her to take from his wealth what reasonably sufficed her and her children — a foundational text for the enforceability of maintenance and for self-help in cases of withholding. The prophetic injunction ‘It is sin enough for a man that he neglects those whom he is bound to feed’ establishes maintenance of dependents as a religious as well as a legal duty.
Heads of Obligation: Spouse, Children, and Parents
Three principal heads of nafaqah are recognized. First and most robust is spousal maintenance: upon a valid and consummated marriage (or the wife’s offering of herself), the husband owes his wife food (ta’am), clothing (kiswah), and lodging (maskan) suited to her station and his means, together with such ancillaries as the schools include — household help where her rank warrants it, and according to many jurists medical and personal-care expenses falling under ma’ruf. This entitlement is the wife’s personal right and does not lapse merely because she possesses her own wealth; she is maintained as a function of the marital bond, not of need.
Second is the maintenance of children. The father bears the duty to support his minor children, and adult offspring who are unable to earn — through disability, chronic illness, or, for daughters, until marriage in many formulations — out of his means; the mother is generally not liable while the father is solvent, though she may be required to contribute where he is absent or destitute. Third is the reciprocal duty of solvent adult children toward needy, indigent parents, grounded in the Quranic command of ihsan (kindness and dutiful care) to parents at 17:23-24 and 31:14-15; here maintenance flows upward, conditioned on the parents’ poverty and the child’s surplus capacity. Beyond these, several schools extend a conditional duty of support to other indigent close relatives (dhawu al-arham) within the bounds of inheritance relationship and the ability of the maintainer.
Standard, Conditions, the Debt, and Nushuz
The measure of maintenance is ma’ruf — customary sufficiency — but the schools weigh its reference point differently. The Hanafis gauge spousal nafaqah by the conjoined state of both spouses (the husband’s means and the wife’s rank). The Shafi’is famously fix a quantified baseline keyed to the husband’s affluence (the well-off owing a larger fixed measure of staple food, the straitened less). The Malikis and Hanbalis emphasize sufficiency to the wife’s like and the husband’s capacity, and the Ja’fari (Imami) school stresses adequacy to her need at her customary standard. All agree that maintenance must be real and continuous, not nominal.
Two doctrines define the obligation’s force. First, the wife’s maintenance is legally enforceable and, when unpaid, hardens into a debt (dayn) on the husband’s liability — the Maliki and Ja’fari schools are explicit that arrears do not simply evaporate but remain recoverable, by a court if necessary, and survive divorce or the husband’s death as a claim against his estate; the Hanafis traditionally treat past maintenance as extinguished unless fixed by judicial decree or mutual agreement, a notable point of divergence. Second is nushuz — the wife’s recalcitrance, meaning her unjustified refusal of conjugal availability or her departure from the marital home without right (4:34 references nushuz of the wife, and 4:128 the husband’s). The majority hold that a wife in a state of established nushuz forfeits her maintenance for its duration, since nafaqah is the counterpart of her availability (tamkin); her right revives upon return to obedience. Where, however, she withholds for a lawful cause — such as the husband’s failure to pay the prompt dower or to provide proper lodging — she is not deemed nashizah and her entitlement stands.
See also: Fiqh Al Nikah, Fiqh Al Talaq, Fiqh Al Hadana, Fiqh Al Rada, Fiqh Al Miras Wal Tarika