Things that you may not have known about family law in Israel.- It is all run by the religious courts
- this means that if you are Muslim you are under the jurisdiction of the sharia courts, Christians under church courts and Jews to the rabbinical courts (beit din)
- This means that Catholics cannot get divorced in Israel
- This also means that if you don't have a religion then you can't get married in Israel (though this is changing)
- For Jews, the only option is an orthodox court, reform and conservative streams do not get any recognition.
- The courts are also mainly populated by ultra-orthodox (haredi) judges.
Some of the quirks of this system for Jews include
- the option for men to take a second wife but never for a women to acquire a second husband
- the power of divorce to be completely in the hands of the husband
- that if a woman refuses to sleep with her husband he now has grounds for divorce and no longer has to pay her the ketuba money.
- a woman can however explain her reasons for not sleeping with her husband but they better be good
- a not good enough excuse is simply not wanting to, a good excuse is that your doctor told you not to while you are undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.
- that if you try to escape the system by having a civil marriage in Cyprus the rabbinate will still recognize that marriage and you will still come under their jurisdiction for a divorce.
- that you can be barred from marriage in your own country simply because you are a divorcee or a convert and your fiancée is a Cohen
- or you can be barred from marrying any other Jew if your mother was married to somebody else other than your father when you were born.
- the trouble is you won't know that you can't marry anybody because the black list is not publicized and there is no course for appeal or revocation of that status.
- that even if you try to protect yourself by signing a pre-nup the rabbinate will say that this contract led your Get to being not of your husbands free will and hence invalid.
- that basically the way for a woman to get divorced in Israel is for her to give up on her right to property and maintenance and children in exchange for the Get.
This is the system that I hopefully will be working in one day.
I suppose there's a lot of work to do.
