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On a practical level, a husband who can threaten to withhold a get possesses unfettered control in determining the outcome of his divorce dispute.
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Halachic Attitudes Regarding Get Recalcitrance In some extreme cases, safety concerns may require supervised visitation arrangements, and the use of a get to obtain unsupervised visitation can be downright dangerous. A woman may be so desperate for a get that she will consider agreeing to an unfair financial settlement, or custody and visitation terms that are not in the best interests of the children. Sometimes, the get becomes a potent tool to extract financial or other concessions in divorce negotiations, beyond those that a disinterested third party would judge to be reasonable. But even short of that, a husband might threaten to withhold a get until his wife meets certain demands that he genuinely views as reasonable. In the very worst cases, a recalcitrant spouse may put a price tag on a get and use it to extort large sums of money. But that does not always happen, and sometimes the parties engage in a protracted and highly litigious ordeal (ideally in beit din, a rabbinical court but, too often, in a secular court), with each spouse fighting intensely over money and child custody and visitation arrangements. Ideally, a husband and wife wishing to separate negotiate an agreement with the help of their rabbis, their lawyers, or a mediator, that involves mutual compromise and allows both of them and their children to move on with their lives.
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Two people who, until now, had ordered their social and economic affairs based on the proposition that they would remain together, are forced to negotiate a separate existence. They are robbed of the autonomy and freedom necessary to begin new relationships and attempt to rebuild their lives.īut the plight of the modern-day agunah should capture our attention not only because we have a responsibility to ameliorate the suffering of long-term agunot and prevent the occurrence of more such cases going forward, but also because the potential for get recalcitrance dramatically affects the balance of power in quite a number of divorce negotiations.ĭivorce is a messy prospect. Some women in this position were victims of domestic violence in their marriages, and despite their best efforts to the contrary, remain wedded indefinitely and against their control to their abusers. The anguish experienced by spouses who are not assured their husbands will cooperate with the get process is heartwrenching. Without a get, a woman may not remarry and the children born from any subsequent unions bear the stigma of mamzerut (offspring of a relationship forbidden by the Torah). While it is true that a get may also be withheld by a woman (as we shall see), because of a number of sociological and halachic considerations, the vast majority of cases in which a get has not been forthcoming have involved recalcitrant husbands, rather than wives.
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Today the term “ agunah” has come to refer, more often, to women whose husbands refuse to give a get, a Jewish bill of divorce, even after their marriage has functionally ended.Īlthough a get is ultimately delivered in the vast majority of divorces in our communities, in many instances the giving of the get itself becomes a contested matter between a divorcing couple. Until relatively recently in our history, the agunah problem was limited to cases of women whose husbands were lost at war or at sea, and who could not remarry without halachically acceptable evidence of their demise. This article is an attempt to explain the importance of the prenuptial agreement, and argue for its wider adoption among all segments of the observant Jewish community. It has been so successful that it carries the promise of effectively ending the agunah problem as we know it. One of the great challenges facing our community is the problem of the modern-day agunah: women who remain trapped in marriages that have already functionally ended, because their husbands refuse to grant them a get, a Jewish bill of divorce.īut over the course of the past 20 years, one particular solution – the Beth Din of America prenuptial agreement – has emerged as the most promising preventative solution to the agunah problem.