Rabbinical Court Rules Lawyers of Get Refusers Will be Sanctioned

 

Lawyers who act to prevent the giving of a get (Jewish divorce document) and harm divorce proceedings can be slapped with sanctions, the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court ruled in a groundbreaking decision earlier this week.

Av Beth Din Rabbi Meir Freeman, along with Rabbi David Berdugo and Rabbi Yitzhak Rabinowitz, issued the ruling after a husband who refused to give his wife a get stated that he was not opposed to issuing the divorce, but was doing so because his attorney had advised him to in order to benefit in financial negotiations against his wife.

In order to conduct a divorce under Jewish law, a husband is required to give a divorce document known as a get to his wife. Until the document is handed to the wife, the divorce cannot take effect. An issue that has arisen from this requirement is that some husbands refuse to give their wives a get for a number of reasons, including as revenge and as a blackmail tool, thereby preventing them from remarrying. Wives whose husbands refuse to issue a get are referred to as agunot ("anchored" or "chained" in Hebrew.)

Rabbinical courts often use sanctions in order to pressure husbands into issuing the get to their wives. In Israel, the sanctions are legally recognized and can include a variety of measures, including bans on exiting the country, holding a drivers license and managing a bank account. Husbands who refused to issue a divorce can even be imprisoned in extreme cases.

The wife in the recent case began proceedings in the rabbinical court due to her husband's worsening cognitive condition which she feared could eventually make it impossible to receive a get if proceedings continued for too long. The wife was represented by attorneys Orit Lahav and Batya Cohen from the Mavoi Satum organization, which works to help women whose husbands refuse to grant them a divorce. 

The attorneys of the wife subsequently filed a request to the rabbinical court to place sanctions on the attorney, leading the husband's attorney to announce that the husband was now ready to issue the divorce. The husband's attorney demanded, however, that Mavoi Satum cover his legal costs.

The rabbinical court denied the husband's attorney's request, ruling that the lawsuit was not considered vexatious litigation (legal action meant solely to harass someone) since it is "not inconceivable that there will be cases in which it can be proved that a husband who is required to grant a divorce refuses to grant the divorce only due to misconduct by his attorney."