<![CDATA[This study examines how Religious Court judges construct legal discovery (rechtsvinding) when a divorce suit is filed because of the husband's failure to fulfil his maintenance obligation - a question that earlier research has predominantly approached from a normative angle, without tracing how judges translate the abstract duty of maintenance into a legal ground for divorce. The object of study is Decision Number 164/Pdt.G/2023/PA.Pspk of the Padangsidimpuan City Religious Court, analysed through a normative juridical approach with a case study design that combines document analysis (primary, secondary, and tertiary legal materials) with interviews with court officials as key informants, processed qualitatively by content analysis and descriptive juridical analysis. The central finding is that the judge does not build an autonomous legal ground out of the maintenance obligation itself: through the qualification of facts and the interpretation of Article 19 letter (f) of Government Regulation Number 9 of 1975 in conjunction with Article 116 letter (f) of the Compilation of Islamic Law, the neglect of maintenance is absorbed into the concept of syiqaq, while the resulting harm is weighed against the fiqh maxim dar'u al-mafāsid muqaddam 'alā jalb al-maṣāliḥ. This construction shows that rechtsvinding in this case operates not in a legal vacuum but as a constructive interpretation within norms that already exist - a finding that enters the debate on how judicial reasoning distributes legal certainty and protects the maintenance rights of wives in Indonesian Islamic family law.]]>
