The more I think about it, the more it comes across as: “I know we’re divorced, but Bob keeps telling people we’re not divorced. And Jerry believes Bob and won’t marry me because Bob keeps telling him we’re not divorced. MAKE HIM STOP!”
Bob can tell people whatever he wants, the law is the law. If you’re part of a group of assholes who listen to Bob over you, the government can’t force those assholes to listen to you instead.
No, of course not. The state has no business mucking around with religious notions of marriage and divorce. As long as the wman can get a civil divorce, the rest is just so many magic words. She can also get legally remarried without an Orthodox Jewish ceremony. If she doesn’t like being denied an Orthodox ceremony…well that’s the religion she chose. Religious orgnizations provide services on their own terms, not the customer’s.
I’m genuinely sorry. But this – as I’d expect you to appreciate – is a single decision from a single state’s intermediate court of appeals, and hardly constitutes the final word on the subject. My posting the decsion was in no way intended to signal that “everyone is wrong,” and, indeed, I disagree with the result and would have to include myself in the “everyone” category who is wrong.
In short, I wanted a sanity check. If a parade of folks came along here and said how reasonable it was, I’d have good reason to reevaluate my own reaction.
So I’m not trying to be obstinate, here. If the general feeling is that you’d rather hear up front about the “actual result,” I’ll do that, henceforth, but as i said before, I wanted to avoid poisoning the well and get reactions untainted by knowing there was a contrary decision out there.
I’d be farther along the road towards agreement, certainly. I guess I’d view it like a binding arbitration clause, where both parties agree to have their dispute settled by a third party. The mere fact that that third party is religious is not material to the civil courts’ enforcement of the binding aspect of the arbitration.
But how anyone can read the words of the ketubah and reach that result is beyond me.
Incidentally, the discussion at Volokh was in how this case might analogize to the use of sharia law, which has been somewhat of a hot topic lately but very much NOT where I wanted to go with this, which is one reason I did not link to the initial post there.
Not necesarily - I am no expert on Judaism, but the devil is in the details, no? Many ketubahs are purely ceremonial and abstract, but if one should have specific, enforceable contractual provisions in it, why should it be any different than a regular secular prenup? Post-divorce maintenance, that sort of thing.
Most definitely. S’matter of fact, people are supposed to literally beat the recalcitrant husband until he signs the get. The get is completely valid even though the husband was forced to sign it.
It is really unbalanced by gender. I don’t understand “protected classes” to know whether that’s a problem, but I hope it is.
The agreement touches on stuff that’s not touched by law, i.e., whether you’re married in the eyes of God or whatever.
There don’t appear to be penalties within the contract for breaking the contract.
Could this thing be enforced if it were written in a secular way? That is, imagine it said, “If Bob and I get divorced, Bob will have to write a piece of paper that says we’re divorced.” Is that enforceable–could the courts force Bob to write that? What if the agreement had no penalties listed in it for not writing it?
Orthodox Jewish ketubahs are neither ceremonial nor abstract, and both participants in the marriage are aware of that. They are not at all like marriage vows.
I know that theoretically, but having been raised pretty ultra-Reform, I’ve only ever glanced at any kind of ketubah, let alone an Orthodox one in a language I could read. (The only ones I remember looking at were in a Judaica shop in Berkeley while waiting for my friend, the bride, to rent her chuppah, and were mostly of the “egalitarian Aramaic, suitable for same-sex ceremonies” variety.) Perhaps it woud be enlightening to the rest of us if you posted English-language text for things that might be included in a typical Orthodox* ketubah.*
Well…good for Jewish law. That has no bearing on black letter contract law.
This Schneider case that Volokh brought up is a lousy example anyway. This Schneider fellow was appealing sanctions that the trial court subjected him to for dragging out the litigation for no good reason. His wife attempted to get him to answer interrogatories to try and flesh out his intent at the time he signed the ketubah, i.e. did he intend the vow to be a contract, but he ignored her discovery motions, and therefore his wife’s claim that it was contractual won by default. This case was more about procedure and bad legal representation than heady issues of constitutional law.
Yeah, I know it is not binding precedent across the country, but many laymen won’t. I object to the tactic in the strongest possible terms. Feels like an ambush, regardless of your intent. I’d prefer a different approach, where you disclose the court opinion in the OP, and then concur or dissent up front. I don’t really see that as poisoning the well. This is the SDMB. People here will argue about any damn thing, regardless of what a court may have held. I just think they oughta know what the court did before taking a position.
My point was that because the ketubah is a full fledged contract under Jewish law it can be argued that the parties intended a contract - even under secular law.
Well, Oakminster, I respect your acumen and approach to things, in general. I don’t agree with your conclusion here, but I’d rather have the slight negative of well-poisoning than your lack of participation and/or scorn. So the next time I have a topic to discuss that has existing legal precedent, I’ll include it in the OP. I’ll put it in a spoiler box, which will hopefully ameliorate the effect I’m worrying about at least a bit – even if people read it before replying, they’ll probably reach an initial conclusion in thought before reading.
Problem is that the groom is accepting all these obligations on himself in exchange for his ownership of all household assets.
Does the court accept that part of the contract or only the part it liked? And if the latter, can a court accept only one side’s obligations in a contract?
As an aside, to this non-lawyer, this seems to be reminiscent of the Sharia law issue that has become a popular boogey-man among conservatives, in that it is a case of the government adjudicating contracts, that are based on cultural/religious legal systems rather than secular laws. Am I right on this?
The blog post that inspired mine took this view of the issue, and in my opinion it’s a huge distraction to the underlying issue… one major reason I chose to not identify that blog as the starting point for the discussion.