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Gett-Refuser Awarded 100,000 Shekels

A rabbinical court in Israel granted 100,000 shekels to Haifa resident who refused a Gett for 14 years.

From Arutz 7:

A resident of Haifa who refused to divorce her husband for 14 years will do no jail time and receive 100,000 shekels from her husband in return for granting the divorce, a rabbinical court has ruled.

According to Ynet, the couple parted in 1993 and the husband filed for divorce, while the wife filed for alimony and child support. They moved back together afterward, though, and signed an agreement according to which the husband would cancel the divorce proceedings and would pay the wife alimony and child support despite their living in the same home, for an unlimited period of time.

The couple split up again in 2000, however, and the husband moved out of the apartment. In 2011, he filed for divorce and said that the wife is making him miserable, keeping his children away from him and refusing to divorce him for fear of losing the sum of 3,500 shekels he is paying her every month.

The wife refused to divorce, however, and demanded a process of reconciliation (shlom bayit) between her and her husband. The husband offered her 80,000 shekels in return for agreeing to divorce, but she rejected this, noting that the sum was only equivalent to what she would receive from him in the course of two years, under their current arrangement.

The Rabbinical Court recently decided to end the affair this year and ruled that there is no justification for a process of shlom bayit after so many years of separation. Rabbinical Judges Daniel Adri and Eyal Yoef accepted the husband’s claim that the wife is not interested in him, but in his money, and that she is only dragging him out for the purpose of getting more cash from him.

In describing the wife’s actions, the court used the verb “le’agen” – from the same root as “aguna,” the term used for women whose husbands refuse to give them divorce decrees.

However, unlike the cases involving “recalcitrant husbands,” who are routinely severely punished, this recalcitrant wife was not jailed for a single day, and was awarded 100,000 shekels in compensation from her husband.

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14 Comments

  • Buddy Love

    26 grand basically, if he had payed it 14 years ago it clearly would have been better for him.

    • Milhouse

      He’s been paying all these years. It took this long for a beis din to tell her enough is enough, this is all you get.

  • Great Dane

    Sick story. Unfortunately, in Israel there as as many agunim as agunot. May Hashem have mercy on them.

  • oy vey

    Now men will start a new movement called “Every Agun is my brother”

    But… no… men are suposed to be stronger and never a victim…

    Why this lady didn’t suffer what men who refuse to give a Get suffer? Why women have protection?

    And they call Torah machism…

  • YMSP

    Oh please. He actually filed in 2011, so the whole case (including division of assets) took 3.5 years, not 14. The Sholom Bayis petition could or could not have been valid (ask your crystal ball) and it’s generally her right under Takonas Rabbeinu Gershom (a man’s is DOraisa). If there were extreme circumstances they could have done a zikui get. And here’s the kicker…. she was compliant with Bais Din the whole time (whether they were compliant with halacha and if she needed to work with them is another story). Just because people make up every crazy lie about men in divorces doesn’t mean that we should do the same to women. Insanity x 2 = Insanity x 2, not vindication.

    • YMSP

      In fairness to the author of the article, who’s a valiant fighter against parental alienation and the atrocities committed against both men and women, but much more often against men, in family courts, it seems like he’s trying to point out the double standard. Men are often berated and subjected to crazy publicity for either seeking to secure meaningful custody in a divorce, or just for insisting on counseling sessions. However, the answer is not to compound the problem but to insist on fairness for both sides and for saving marriages and not rushing to gittin. 3.5 years is relatively long for a momenus struggle and it should have been negotiated much quicker (and probably much less costly), but that wasn’t one party holding up the process. The solution is not to defame and to promote mediation, with a goal of first and foremost trying to find any way to repair the marriage and if not, then to negotiate a reasonable settlement. Sensationalizing one case because men’s cases have been falsely sensationalized, is not the way.

  • Never Better

    The world just seems to get darker and darker? Why did she want to steal his money?

  • @Milhouse (3)

    If he dropped all the money on her in pennies I’m sure she would have accepted and moved on.

  • Can't take it

    I just love the chocolate in the ad on this article! Love you Gombos.