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:
1- People are not in their senses while asleep.
2- If a man utters talaq (divorce) while sleeping, it will have no religious validity.
In his response to your question, Sheikh `Abdul-Majeed Subh, a prominent Azhar scholar, states:
Divorcing wife while sleeping has no religious validity. So if a person utters the words of divorce while sleeping, such divorce cannot be considered valid.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is reported to have said, “The pen has been raised for three persons [meaning they are not held accountable for what they do]: one who is sleeping until he wakens, a child until he reaches the age of puberty, and an insane person until he becomes sane” (Ahmad, Abu Dawud, At-Tirmidhi, An-Nasa’i, Ibn Majah, and Al-Hakim).
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.