Q: I was engaged to a boy for 4 months and then in order to avoid any sin we decided to do nikaah without telling our parents as they decided to wait for both of us to complete our education before getting us married. However, both families had pure and hearty intentions to get us married without any objection. Now it has been a year since we have done our nikaah in presence of two witnesses who were his friends. The disputes between us have been increased to unbearable limits now. My family has also found some unignorable facts about his family due to which they are having second thoughts. This guy who is my husband has abused me mentally so much that I have completely lost my self respect, my personality, my life goals and now he has also started to disrespect my family. I changed my complete self to keep him happy and yet he is still not satisfied at all with me. He fights with me and goes away for months, doesn't talk to me for months and I never know where he is and what he is doing. At this point my family has seen me depressed all the time and they, including myself has decided to get separated from him and his family. Now when I decided to get khula from him I started studying how it is done. It looks simple but we didn't register our nikaah nor we did any paper work. How should I proceed? Please guide me. And also I've been reading contradicting articles, some says nikaah is not valid without the girl's parents presence and some say in Hanafi mazhab it is valid if the girl is sane and adult. Please guide me through this issue as soon as possible.