The plaintiff and defendant were married on 3 September 2007 and had their first and only child on 7 August 2008. Around the same time, however, the parties had begun to quarrel because the plaintiff's parents did not approve of the plaintiff's relationship with the defendant. Their disapproval was based on the defendant misleading them all by saying he had not been married before, when, in actual fact, he had been married and already had a child from his previous marriage. The plaintiff and her parents knew this because the defendant's child from his previous marriage would often come to the parties' home asking for money.
The defendant had left the matrimonial home and the parties had been separated for approximately five years. The defendant would also visit the child he had with the plaintiff at the plaintiff's parents' home for the first four months of the child's life, after which he stopped visiting. The plaintiff did not know of the defendant's whereabouts, and the defendant had failed to provide financially for the plaintiff since their separation. Pursuant to the parties' marriage agreement, the plaintiff was prepared to pay the agreed sum of money ('iwadh) to divorce the defendant.
The court, pursuant to art 116(g) of the Compilation of Islamic Laws, found that because the defendant had contravened figures 1, 2 and 4 of the parties' marriage contract by leaving for three consecutive years, not providing the plaintiff with any financial support for three months (the defendant had failed to do so for two years), and not caring for the plaintiff for more than six months, the evidentiary burden for divorce contained in art 39(2) of Law No. 1 of 1974 on Marriage had been met. Accordingly, the court granted the plaintiff a divorce based on the plaintiff paying to the defendant IDR 10,000 (talak satu khul'i).