Through the lens of maintenance cases initiated by women, this paper examines strategies that Palestinian women used to gain benefits in the 1930s Jerusalem Shari’a Court. While men had significant legal advantages in Muslim family law, many women not only claimed their rights in court, but sometimes also obtained further benefits. For example, at times women initiated maintenance lawsuits, but they were actually able to obtain divorces. However, the most common outcome of my cases was the judge’s refusal of the wife’s request because her husband was already providing a house. But even if there was housing, a woman could still win in situations in which she was compelled to live with her husband’s family, she had children in need, she had a lawyer, or the husband failed to appear in court. But if the probability was minimal for a woman to win payments when she already had housing and there were none of these extenuating factors, why did women bother to sue for maintenance? It may have been a way for a woman to admonish her husband, which may or may not have been related to his role as a provider. Suing one’s husband in court was conducted in a public venue, and it was a statement that could bring some degree of dishonor to the entire family. By going to court, and compelling her husband to appear in court, a woman was in effect announcing that her husband was not providing adequately or there was another problem in the marriage. One contentious issue that arose was the husband’s family living with the couple, as several maintenance claims indicated. Other women who requested maintenance actually seem to have been seeking a divorce, and it was not unusual for a maintenance case to shift into a wife-initiated divorce case. Expanding on the scholarship that demonstrates Palestinian women were historically active participants in the shari’a courts, this paper analyzes women’s strategic negotiations and the circumstances under which they tended to succeed in maintenance cases in the Mandate period. The cases also convey some ways in which Palestinians felt and thought about family law during this period. In particular, they provide glimpses of how people perceived their roles and obligations within the family and their gendered rights. Women certainly were well-informed about their maintenance rights, and they exploited this right as a pretext to come to court for a variety of reasons.