When a fasting person breaks his fast, depending on what the intention of his fasting is and when during the day he has broken his fast, his act could be permissible or prohibited. For example, it is permissible to break a recommended fast at any time during the day. However, a non-specified obligatory fast can be broken only until before the ẓuhr Adhān and, based on the obligatory precaution, it is not permissible to break such fasts after ẓuhr. Similarly, the Qada fasts of the month of Ramadan can be broken before the ẓuhr Adhān on the condition that there is still time to perform it on another day. If one breaks a Qada fast after ẓuhr, he has done a haram act and he needs to pay expiation for it as well. The expiation for it would be feeding 10 poor people with 1 mudd of food, which is almost 750 grams, and if one cannot afford that, they need to fast 3 days as expiation. As for the specified obligatory fasting, it is not permissible to do anything that invalidates fasting after the Fajr. Therefore, if one intentionally does anything that would invalidate their fasting, knowing that it is prohibited, they need to expiate it in addition to observing the Qada fast. Similarly, if one breaks their fast because they heard an unreliable person say that it was sunset when in fact it was not, they need to observe the Qada fast and expiate it as well. There are 4 cases of intentionally breaking the fast which will not incur expiation. 1. If one breaks one's fast and then they encounter a problem, such as menstruation or an illness which prevents them from fasting on that day. In this case, they only need to observe the Qada fast, but expiation is obligatory upon them. 2. If a person knows for sure that a certain day is the first day of the month of Ramadan, but they intentionally do not fast on that day or invalidate their fasting and then later they realize that it was the last day of the month of Sha'ban, they do not need either to observe the Qada or expiate it. 3. If a person doubts whether a certain day is the last day of the month of Ramadan or the day of Eid al-Fiṭr, and they intentionally break their fast and later realize that it had been the day of Eid al-Fiṭr, they do not need to either fast again for that day or pay any expiation. 4. Generally speaking, if a fasting person does any of the invalidators of fasting due to lack of knowledge regarding the related religious rulings, their fasting will be invalidated and they must observe the Qada fast, but they do not need to