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Orthodox Caucus Calls Repackaged Prenuptial Agreement
Vital
NEW YORK -- A prenuptial agreement developed by Rabbi Mordechai Willig, a prominent Orthodox decisor of Jewish law, is being repackaged and remarketed in the centrist Orthodox community.
Although the agreement was endorsed by the Rabbinical Council of America in 1993, only about half of the RCA's nearly 1,000 member rabbis urge marrying couples to sign it, Rabbi Basil Herring said.
Herring, who is promoting the agreement, is coordinator of the Orthodox Caucus, an organization of Orthodox rabbinical and lay leaders working with the centrist Orthodox community's major institutions on issues of common concern.
The group includes the RCA, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and Yeshiva University.
"We think 100 percent of the rabbis should be using the prenuptial agreement, but the only way for that to happen is for people to request it," Herring said.
Part of the problem has been that the agreement came in the form of a computer printout, the rabbi said.
It was not very attractive and was regarded by some rabbis as an afterthought - not as essential as the betrothal document, (tena'im) or the wedding contract (ketubah).
To make it more appealing, the Orthodox Caucus put together a specially designed kit, using heavy paper in shades of teal with embossed gold-foil stickers. The kit contains all the marriage-related documents endorsed by the RCA, the prenuptial agreement, the tena'im and the ketubah.
"Recognition" of reality
Having the prenuptial agreement signed by every Orthodox couple getting married requires more than an attractive certificate, Herring said.
It requires "recognition of some of the realities and problems out there. There are so many cases of recalcitrant husbands who abuse the system in ways that were not anticipated centuries ago that we have to come up with contemporary responses."
"With the increasing breakdown of so many marriages there has to be thought given to properly terminating them in a way that does not disadvantage women in particular," he said.
When an Orthodox couple wants to divorce, both parties are supposed to go to a beit din (religious court).
But a growing number of men have refused to sign a get, which only a man can grant in Jewish law.
The result has been that thousands of women - no one is sure exactly how many - have become agunot, or women chained to dead marriages without the bills of divorce they require to date and remarry.
Although some tools - from shutting a man out of the life of the community to beating him up - have been used by rabbinic authorities to persuade a man to give a divorce, they are ineffective or not widely used today.
The concept of using prenuptial agreements to prevent women from becoming agunot (women unable to receive a get) is good, said Rivka Haut, an advocate for Orthodox women unable to get divorces.
Ambiguous wording
But she expressed reservations about "the ambiguous wording" of the agreement designed by Willig.
It permits the option of including or excluding in their prenuptial agreement three specific issues for a religious court to decide: financial disputes; division of assets; and child support, visitation and custody.
A man's decision to sign a get should not depend on resolution of any of those issues, said Haut. And, she argued, if a woman agrees to include the three clauses in the prenuptial agreement, she could be signing away her right to have those issues decided by a civil court.
Herring agreed that a get should be given apart from any of the other issues between a divorcing couple, but that resolution of the other issues often is demanded by a man before he agrees to give a get.