Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
Regarding your marriage, as long as it meets the requirements of Islamic marriage, it is valid; it could not be dissolved except by divorce or any other legal means of ending marriages.
In his response to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
As long as you have solemnized the marriage in accordance with the requirements of the Shari`ah, and your husband did not divorce you, then your marriage is still valid, even though you did not live with your husband for more than two months in three years.
Marriage can be only dissolved through a divorce: Divorce can take place in one of three ways:
1- Through actual pronouncement of divorce by the husband with proper documentation,
2- Divorce by the initiation of the wife,
3- Dissolution of marriage through a judge, authorized to do so, in case of necessity.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.