Women being kept happy and content in the event of divorce

For people who live in the light of the desires of their lower selves, divorce means the total cessation of relations with the other party. Such people believe that once relations based on self-interest have come to an end there is no longer a need to show the other person any care or concern. Since they generally lose all feelings of love and respect for the person they abandon, they act solely in the light of preserving their own interests and are quite capable of ignoring the troubles and difficulties faced by the other party. The fact is, however, that our Almighty Lord described how women should be treated with love and affection and proper moral values after divorce:

When you divorce women and they are near the end of their term, then either retain them with correctness and courtesy or release them with correctness and courtesy. (Qur'an, 2:231)

You who believe! When you marry believing women and then divorce them before you have touched them, there is no term for you to calculate for them, so give them a gift and let them go with kindness. (Qur'an, 33:49)

Both verses refer to “courtesy” and “kindness.” This means that the man still has a responsibility to treat a woman with kindness after divorce; a woman may not be working, may have no financial means and may have nowhere to live. These verses place a divorced woman under protection, and offer the options of retaining them with correctness and courtesy or else releasing them, again with correctness and courtesy. The man has to treat the woman properly under both conditions.