The Role of the Beth Din in Preventing and Resolving Agunah Cases

good morning everyone uh my name is benjamin kaminetsky um i'm an attorney at uh davis poke and wardwell in new york i am also um involved in the basement of america and it's great pleasure for me to welcome you to this session featuring one of the true quiet heroes of the american orthodox jewish community i'm sure you've all had the following experience you are you hold an organization whether it's jewish or otherwise in high regard and then you get involved and once you are on the inside once you see how the sources is made you are disappointed and you view that organization and your view of that organization plummets since i got involved in the beta of america i've had just the opposite experience after getting a glimpse of how the sources is made my appreciation admiration and reverence for the work of the basement of america has increased exponentially be it the professionalism independence and absolute impartiality of the dna torah arbitration process done under the auspices of the basin of america and i commend you to read the anonymized opinions that were recently issued by the best thing of america in their dina in their uh arbitration cases that you'll find in your welcome packet in the bethenny journal whether it's the the kind of the scholarship and independence and fidelity to halacha in the law that's reflected in that opinion or an apropos to the topic of today the extraordinary extraordinary care empathy compassion discretion in which the best in attempts to involve it to resolve the most sensitive divorce and family issues with absolute again uncompromising fidelity to halacha and the law and just to give you an example just you know halacha i don't have to talk about as you know we're under the leadership of rav gadalia schwartz and rav willig from yeshiva university but this summer just to give you an idea of how seriously we take what we do spent literally hundreds of hours this summer going through the prenuptial agreement which you're going to hear about today looking at the law of how many different states 20 25 different states to make sure that the prenuptial agreement would be enforced by courts in the various states that uh that we looked at literally hundreds of hours to make sure that we know that we're doing things as uh appropriately and as accurately as possible under every possible scenario that we could imagine i'm literally awestruck by the work of the best then and a big part of that is through the leadership of the menahel the director of the based in america rabbi weissman who is today's speaker rory weissman received his smiha from reits in 2001 and recently also earned his yada yada smikha from yu this past spring he's a graduate of yeshiva college and then columbia law school where he was a harlan fiscal fisk stone scholar and where he graduated in 2001. before joining the best den of america rabbi weissman worked at some of the most prestigious law firms in manhattan including deva voice and clinton so it's with great honor and cover that i introduce rabbi weissman the men hell of the bathroom of america thank you very much ben thank you for that introduction but also thank you for your um increased involvement over the past uh year um in the governance of the president of america ben joins a long and or not a long but short and formidable list of lay leaders that we've been blessed to uh have at our helm in the modern era of the best in of america dating back to the mid-1990s starting with shelley rudolph oliver shalom the past president of the ou who served as our president in the early 2000s eric goldstein who is now the chief operating officer of uja federation of new york most recently alan fagan who now is the chief operating officer of the ou and so ben we hope that you uh before you go over to go to some huge big organization that dwarfs us in size uh you will serve us in the able way that you've shown you've shown until now that you that you're committed to doing i'd like to talk a little about the prenuptial agreement i'd like to start by describing the agreement briefly talking about its advantages and what a groundbreaking and important document it is and then hopefully at the end we'll have time for questions and answers so we could have a dialogue about about the agreement and its importance the best way to describe the prenup best way to describe anything perhaps is with a story so i'll start with a story in the fall of 2005 a husband and wife with one child started to get divorced they separated in anticipation of divorce they had married years earlier a few years earlier in an orthodox wedding ceremony and things had not gone well in their marriage the husband filed for divorce and early on in that divorce process he approached his wife and recommended that they present themselves to a besdon to arrange a get and for whatever reason the wife declined she said i'm not interested in it yet leave me alone their divorce proceeded and by 2008 the couple finally finished their civil divorce process and at this point the husband realized he needed to get more serious about getting a get he really needed to get in order to move on with his life and so at this point when the wife continued to refuse to receive a yet he contacted the bethan of america to send azman a summons to summon the wife to come to besdon now i serve as the menahil as the director of the bespin of america and almost always i can't really tell stories about the cases that come before us because of of the promise of confidentiality that we make to the people that come to us for our services but every once in a while a case makes it into the public record and as we'll see in a moment this is one such case so as it turns out this couple had signed what's known as the rca or bethan of america prenup let's take a moment to talk about what exactly the prenup says what it provides um and then we'll continue the story the prenup says essentially it's it's relatively simple document it says that from the the day the couple separates until their divorce until their divorce as a matter of jewish law in other words until the get is given the husband owes the wife 150 per day um now if the wife doesn't cooperate with the process for example at any point she declines to receive a get even though the bes didn't suggest that she received the get so the support obligation isn't collectible it goes away but assuming that's not the case this 150 accrues per day until the get is given the idea here clearly is to provide an incentive for a husband to give a get earlier in the process rather than later in the process and as we'll see it works well now in order to follow this story it's important to realize that in may of 2008 we added a slate a tinkering with to the agreement we added a sentence that says that the support obligation really only begins to accrue from the moment the wife notifies the husband of her intent to collect the support and so for example if they separate but the wife doesn't notify the husband of her intent to collect the support the 150 dollars a day doesn't begin doesn't begin to accrue uh it only begins to accrue once she sends a notice to the husband that she intends to collect the support obligation now the case we're talking about was governed by the old prenup and so at this point in the story when the wife was contacted by the bethan of america after the finalization of their civil divorce to receive a get the wife responded that she was prepared to receive a get but only if the husband first paid her a hundred eight thousand dollars representing the hundred fifty dollar a day obligation for the roughly two years that it took for them to get civilly divorced even though she had declined to receive that get there had never been a formal best in proceeding in which she did that and so she reading the literal terms of this document insisted that he owed her 150 a day 108 000 and she wasn't prepared to receive the get until he would pay her the hundred eight thousand dollars the husband of course argued nothing doing he said i was prepared to give her a get from day one why should i pay her a hundred eight thousand dollars that's crazy and so they ended up coming to a hearing before the bethan of america in front of a panel of three dayanim the wife maintained her little literal reading of the agreement the husband said i don't owe her a penny and the bethin convened they convinced her that it was in her best interest to receive the get regardless she received the get and we promised her a written decision on the merits of her monetary claim for the 108 thousand dollars a few days later the panel issued a written determination rejecting the wife's claim for a hundred eight thousand dollars but awarding her ten thousand two hundred dollars this amount reflected the daily support obligation accrued from the date of their separation until the date the husband first approached the wife and suggested they get to get now both the husband and the wife uh were upset now the ex-husband and ex-wife they were both upset the husband thought he shouldn't have to pay anything let alone ten thousand two hundred dollars the wife still thought she was entitled to a hundred eight thousand dollars now one of the unique features of the bethenny of america of our arbitration process is that under section 31 of our rules and procedures we have an appeal process where a non-prevailing party can appeal the decision of the panel to the av bezdin to rival dove schwartz and the way it works is that they submit you submit a written appeal the appeal has to be you have to present it under one of a number of uh conditions one of which is that the the decision reflects a mistake in jewish law and so in this case both of them appealed now regulator of schwarzenegger has the opportunity of authority to delegate it to a different diane and in this case he delegated to rabbi mordecai willig rabbi wilg was a good choice not only because he is an expert in these issues but he's the prime architect of the prenup and in march 2009 rabbi willig handed down a ruling modifying the lower besden panel ruling and concluding that the husband didn't owe anything to his wife the clear intent of the prenup he reasoned was to give a good incentive for the husband to give a get early in the process in this case the husband was prepared to give a get in fact he was the one who was always advocating giving a get and he shouldn't have to pay anything now predictably the ex-wife was now really upset and she promptly went to secular court to argue that an arbitration organization can't overturn its own ruling and at the very least she should be entitled to the ten thousand two hundred dollars that the lower panel had awarded her and finally in 2011 in my favorite judicial decision ever written the court upheld rabbi will's decision and the husband now at the end of the story was permanently off the hook from paying the wife anything under the prenup it's my favorite decision for four reasons number one it upheld our conclusion number two it spoke favorably about our process and specifically affirmed our appeal process under section 31 of our rules and procedures uh number three it actually went further and said that rabbi will make rabbi willow's ruling made sense it was the most equitable way to handle this case and number four if you look at the dates in the uh in the decision you see that the civil court process took a full two years convincing anyone who would have thought otherwise that the uh process at the beth in america is much much more efficient than any litigation in secular court i like to tell this story because it sheds light on the nitty-gritty mechanics of the prenup how it's technically structured the case and the pathway its pathway through the besden and secular court system also demonstrates in a really in a real way in a very way that this document isn't just symbolic it's a real legal instrument that depends on court enforceability to accomplish its goals and the best in of america even in an anomaly like this case vigorously administers the agreement and ensures that it's interpreted justly and fairly i should mention at this point that the post nup works identically to the prena many people who got married uh before there was a prenup have signed post notes my parents are in the audience they just signed a post up last week i think it's a great way to show support for the document and then to spread awareness about the document the truth is that this story isn't typically what happens much more often almost always almost always the prenup works in the way it did in the following case this case happened recently over the past several months but the same description applies to scores of cases that have developed over the years before the bethenny of america under the prenup in this case a couple had an orthodox wedding and they lived outside of the new york area their marriage ended in acrimony and for several years they were engaged in difficult litigation in civil court at some point during this process the wife began to ask the husband for a get and the husband indicated he wasn't prepared to give it to her and even at times he suggested that he would not be prepared to give her the get until he was satisfied with the custody and financial outcome of their divorce case and so the wife began to get worried and she contacted the bethan of america to open up a file and she presented her she realized she had signed a prenup she presented the prenup we began sending out hashmanas summons summonses to the husband we sent out one summons there was no response we sent out a second summons there was no response and i finally ended up on the phone with the husband just after we sent out the third hazmat the third summons and when i spoke to him on the phone the husband complained bitterly about the raw deal he was getting in secular court and he let me know that he wasn't going to give a get until his wife relented and gave him what he thought he was entitled to um in their divorce in their divorce process i calmly explained to him how the prenup worked he didn't seem to move the guy i suggested that he speak to his lawyer to talk about his exposure under the prenup that didn't seem to move him either we sent one final letter indicating to him that we were prepared to schedule an arbitration proceeding pursuant to the terms of the prenup and within three days after we sent that letter the guy calls me up and he tells me he's prepared to give a get that that case or something similar to that happens all the time now it's true inevitably there are going to be cases there are going to be cases where the prenup doesn't work classical aguna cases where a husband just goes missing cases that we find every once in a while where a husband just falls off the grid he's got no assets and no hope he's essentially judgment proof and it's not clear in those kind of cases whether a money judgment against him is going to convince him to give a get but in the vast vast vast majority of cases the challenging aguna cases that we read about in the newspapers that afflict people that we know neighbors and friends of ours that command an inordinate amount of time of our besden and other batte din cases where the institution of the get is utilized sadly as a tool of extortion causing hashem and sullying the name of torah in all those cases or in the vast majority of those cases the prenup has worked smoothly and spectacularly there's something something very compelling about the structure of the prenup rather than seeking to undermine or fundamentally change the process it reaches back in time and it elegantly restores the authority of the community over the individual in the realm of the get think think about what's brought us to where we are today and how the problem of the modern day aguna developed the torah tells us that before isro advised moshe otherwise most sharabanu sat and heard cases min from the morning until the night the talmud teaches us that this phrase harks back to the arab and boker of myself beratious of the creation of the world why why the connection between hearing cases and the creation of the world the governor tells us called dayan shadondin that a judge that adjudicates cases honestly and appropriately is akin to a partner of the rabona shalom in the creation of the world and again why that connection so the bach in his commentary at the beginning of khoshan mishpat says that this connection is because the continued existence of shamayim and aaretz what keeps the sky up and what keeps the earth intact is the social order that a working system of law ensures without a strong judicial system and without the rule of law there's anarchy and the world in which we live in the heavens and the earth just can't tolerate a system with a society without justice but from the perspective from this perspective of a strong jewish judiciary of an intact business system in 2014 on the eve of 2015 in north america the sky is falling there's no universally recognized vesden there's no centralized communal structure there's no empowered rap in it there's no authority to tell people what to do to tell men and women in the divorce process or in any process how to behave in accordance with torah values for all the benefits of a decentralized communal structure and there are many benefits to a decentralized communal structure local autonomy multiplicity of communities diversity there are also some downsides and one of those downsides is that a get can be withheld with impunity without a beside that's both empowered and prepared to justly adjudicate cases the decision of when to give a get or whether to give a get is left to one divorcing party's unilateral discretion that's a recipe inevitably for the abuse of the torah system of divorce it's a recipe for disaster and that's precisely how it's played out over these years their women out there again our friends our neighbors people we know who have been who simply can't remarry despite the functional end of their marriages years long uh ago we've dealt that the besdom with cases of husbands who've withheld getting made explicit demands for money for getting we've seen women of child bearing age who have been denied getting for years one year two years three years more where their inability to date and move on with their lives has a real effect on the trajectory of their lives i've seen insane cases of agunas who have been agunas for 17 years 20 years but the prenup when it's signed is like a magic potion that just magically reverses the state of affairs when a couple signs the prenup we know that the get won't be improperly withheld because there's a disinterested third party the besden that will step in to determine the proper time for the get to be given and importantly it has the power of the purse to back it up and what's encouraging is that quietly over the past 20 years the solution of the prenup has emerged more and more as the long-term solution really the only promising long-term solution to the aguna problem think about this when it was first proposed in the mid-1990s the promoters of the prenup the initial promoters of the prenup had to strike a confident tone about the kind of solution they were proposing and its effectiveness because its effectiveness depended on everyone's participation if the prenup had held any promise of working and ending the aguna problem that could only happen if it were routinely signed by brides and grooms when they got married if nobody signed it or more likely if the only people to sign it were the ones least likely to withhold getting then the solution certainly wouldn't work and yet these initial drafters of the prenup the initial promoters of the prenup couldn't really have known with certainty in its very very earliest days whether this was a real solution that would work would the agreement actually hold up in court would courts actually support awards issued by the besdon under the terms of the prenup would money judgments actually work to convince husbands intent on trading money for a get to give a get well young couples actually signed the document when they got married they couldn't have known for sure if the prenup would be just one more tool that would chip at the edge chip away at the edges of the problem or if it would offer a real robust long-term solution to the problem that wasn't going away this morning twenty years later the picture is entirely entirely different and we have in our possession a real and tested antidote to the aguna problem it's even been court tested in december of 2012 in light v light a connecticut court upheld the constitutionality of the prenup the court gave what we've always known was the correct answer the prenup represents a neutral secular contractual agreement and it doesn't violate any of the constitutional doctrines that would ordinarily bar a court's involvement in a religious controversy and that 2012 ruling set an important precedent for other courts to follow but more importantly the picture is different today because we have practical precedent over and over again the prenup has worked in the background to prevent potential cases of egon sometimes it doesn't even have to be mentioned both parties know it's there and they know how to behave appropriately in their divorce negotiations because they know the consequences if they don't sometimes like the case we just discussed the couple needs to be brought to her the husband needs to be brought to the brink of a dintora hearing and ultimately the prenup works sometimes we even have to go further and actually hold the hearing and issue a decision but time and time again in case after case the prenup has yielded its positive results even in the most acrimonious divorce cases when it seemed improbable that anything would work to get a time we get now like anything new we can't expect immediate universal adoption of the prenup but i'm hopeful that as time goes on and as the experiment of the prenup continues to succeed more and more segments of the jewish community of the orthodox jewish community will adopt the prenup and begin insisting that it be signed by young couples for those who have questions about the propriety of the prenup those are important discussions that need to take place in the public realm and among postgame but you've probably heard some of the cultural arguments against the prenup people say that it's not romantic people say that it's awkward to raise issues of egon and divorce for a young couple in love and about to get married where they've said that having a prenup this was actually reported in the newspaper of two years ago by a prominent member of the orthodox community that the prenup brings the possibility of divorce to the forefront making it a real options when couples who are having marital difficulties should be focusing on improving their marriage not thinking about divorce now intuitively many of us reject these arguments especially the last one because we live in a time where divorce is not a secret divorce is not a rarity everyone knows about divorce it's hard to imagine that raising the issue of divorce talking about divorce with a young couple actually significantly where it all changes the psychology of a couple that's an intuitive argument but now we actually even have some statistics to back up this argument a few years ago an old friend of mine rabbi shmuel maybrook moved to passaic new jersey with his family that's where my family lives and we invited the may brooks over for a shabbos lunch and the conversation at the shabbos table turned to what his wife rebecca hani maybrook was doing she was at the time finishing up her doctorate in psychology and at the shabbos table we started talking about what she was writing for her dissertation and she told us that she was writing about marital satisfaction she was going to conduct her she was just starting then to conduct a survey of married people in the orthodox jewish community she was going to send out the survey and collect the data and write about the things that affect marital satisfaction in the orthodox jewish community and because of my line of work i said to her you should throw uh you should throw a few questions in about the prenup i didn't know what the connection to marital satisfaction was but i figured couldn't hurt get some data about the prenup and that was the end i for completely forgot about that conversation until this past july when i got an email from she's now dr connie maybrook i got an email from dr maybrook indicating that she had actually finished up her marital satisfaction survey she had succeeded in getting 2600 responses to this survey on marital satisfaction which is pretty impressive and she had followed my advice and thrown in a few questions about the prenup in her survey and she invited me to work with her a little and and try to understand what the uh what the responses meant whether we could use any of this data in a positive way and as it turns out uh when you comb through the data about 25 percent of respondents again 25 percent of the 2600 respondents had responded that they had signed the hello 75 percent had not as you'd expect the younger the respondent the more likely they were to sign a prenup that's i find immensely encouraging that's a big number just in its own right and to see that 25 of a random sampling actually signed the prenup i think that speaks well of the saturation not saturation but of the of the of the real uh tremendous strides we've made over the past 20 years in getting people to sign the prenuptial agreement but importantly when the data was analyzed it showed the following the survey calculated or the the the people who analyzed the survey results calculated marital satisfaction based on the dynamic adjustment scale which apparently is the most empirically used scale to determine marital satisfaction based on answers to survey questions and they found no correlation positive or negative between having signed the prenup and the success of a couple and achieving marital satisfaction but more to the point the survey asked the respondents the following question one of the questions in the survey was how often do you discuss or have you considered divorce separation or terminating your relationship now remember some critics of the prenup have argued that signing the prenup makes it more likely that a couple will inappropriately and prematurely think about divorce or talk about divorce or contemplate divorce in in some real way and if that's right then controlling for other factors that would affect how this answer was how this question was answered there should be at least some bump in the line for how married people answer this question depending on whether or not they signed the prenup but when the numbers were tallied the needle didn't move at all there was no correlation at all between signing the prenup and discussing or considering the possibility of divorce we've talked this morning about some of the reasons for signing the prenup its benefits thanks to this study we're a little farther along than we used to be in answering some of the critics of the prenup i'd like to close with one concluding thought that i think is especially appropriate in the context of an ou convention the development and the adoption of the prenup i think represents one of the signal achievements achievements of centrist orthodoxy in america over the past quarter century it was achieved by an extraordinary partnership between the rabbinic and lay leaderships of our community the prenup couldn't have been developed it couldn't have been authored it couldn't have been written without the besden and the cooperation of postgame of stature because the areas of al-akha that are covered by the prenup cover some of the most complex and fraught areas of contemporary sakawacha and just as much it couldn't have been done without the lay leadership the lawyers who drafted it the community leaders who encouraged its embrace because the success of the prenup depends on its legal enforceability and it depends on the willingness of the men and women who will sign it to do so now it's true in some ways the prenup is unique because there are a few other initiatives that so perfectly marry together secular and religious problem solving in one document but in other ways the creative imagination and the collaboration of rabbinic and leadership is just as necessary across the spectrum of challenges that our community faces rabbinic leadership has much to gain from the professionalism and expertise that way organizations like the ou bring to the table and vice versa all our institutions i think across the spectrum across the board stand to benefit from enhanced relationship building and initiatives that integrate and bring together the very best and most talented elements that our communities have to offer i'm happy to open the four to questions and open a discussion about the prenup yes i'll repeat the question the question was whether i see any progress uh in the embrace of the prenup among the more haredi or more yeshivish world the answer is not enough because clearly we have a long way to go it hasn't in any real way been embraced outside or i should say to the right of the modern orthodox world but we do hear some chatter as they say um and there are some positive indications um every once in a while some form of dialogue takes place we're in touch with people who are you know well uh situated within that world and i think increasingly across the spectrum of orthodoxy and even to the right people are coming to the realization that this is just an entire tolerable problem i mean the news a year ago of the arrest of people who took quite a different approach to the aguna problem uh i think woke up some people uh to the notion that this is just not a tenable problem we can't continue to live uh in a situation where couples can't get divorced in the orthodox community without being forced to some level uh or without being exposed to the risk of some level of extortion or just a you know an uneven playing field in divorce negotiation so i think there's some awakening on that front and i'm hopeful that that will in turn lead to further embrace of the prenup of america has but about 18 years ago that a daughter of mine was getting married i was informed about this one and when i moved forever not the mosha templer actually had copies of it i sent a car service the way before the wedding to pick it up nobody could argue against something like that but most people i think was totally unaware of them yeah it's true or moshe feinstein has in his chuvas a prenup his prenup is a much shorter form as you mentioned is it's really just an arbitration agreement that empowers the besden you can name a bezel and empowers the best them to determine issues relating to the divorce it lacks that enforcement mechanism that our prenup has but it's true and the truth is even if people were to just sign that form of prenup that would be a step in the right direction uh the system as it is now you know where there's no prenup signed in in many communities it's just uh leaves it completely uh open yeah uh yeah the question was how do we get more rabbis to insist on using a prenup and the second was how we have we've been in touch with groups in israel such as sohar um about advocating the prenup the answer to the first question is public awareness you know the rabbinical council of america has been instrumental from day one in getting rabbis across north america to sign it from the very beginning the rca passed resolutions past resolutions encouraging rabbis some newer organizations such as the irf have gone even further and required their rabbis to sign prenups and they and they deserve credit for that there's no doubt there's no doubt so you know national organizations have a responsibility and i think to a great extent have stepped up to the plate we need more uh national organizations we need more uh people of influence to encourage rabbis to do so uh we've been we have relationships with raquel levmore is an important mover of the prenup in israel organizations such as baitille and sohar have encouraged the adoption to print up there's a movement even within the rabbanut i think now to encourage the adoption to bring up that's another important frontier uh that that will benefit from uh from the adoption of the prenup although clearly the situation in israel is a different story entirely because there the baitin has authority more so than what they did in the united states so it's a little bit of a different situation but clearly that's that's an area that uh that needs to be also worked on i should ask ben when we spoke about what i mentioned in my introduction the issues that we were looking at this summer that's exactly what we're doing what we're trying to do is to make sure that the prenup is enforceable in as many states as you could imagine jews living in and what some of the tinkering that we're doing on a regular basis is precisely that reason we want to make sure that this is enforceable wherever we might find the gentleman or the couple uh when ultimately classification turns into a situation where the enforceability needs to be retained so the answer is yes we're trying very hard to make sure it's um yes this is a weissman's show but you know i'm a lawyer so it's hard for me to resist the podium um you're exactly right the post nup um california in general i don't know if i don't mean to offend anyone from california is the most difficult jurisdiction when it comes to marital matters because they have very uh different strange idiosyncratic laws when it comes to this stuff and i would say that um i don't know 50 of the time we spend worrying about the prenup we worry about california and we address issues that are unique to california but we're certainly tackling it and we're hoping that the version that we have now would be enforceable uh in california like it would be in new york or new jersey or anywhere else but it's interesting that you mentioned california because that is a thorny jurisdiction because of its unique laws when it comes to this area yeah for years we've had a separate california version of the prenup that's been really uh difficult it requires both sides to have lawyers or at least both the signed waiver of lawyer representation full financial disclosure it's a pain in the neck of a document we're actually in the next few weeks hopefully rolling out a new california version that we hope to may be much more streamlined so that's a development hopefully in their own yeah yeah no the expectation is yes what the expectation is and especially now with the new form the new california form the expectation is that uh prenup signed in new jersey will work in idaho and we'll work in california we're tackling that problem yep yes no no meaning the get that's done under the guise of the prenup where the prenup is sort of lurking in the background follows the typical formalities of any get done at the bethan of america and getting done at the beth in america are universally accepted by their abanot and elsewhere we've never run into a problem of someone challenging the propriety of a get that's been arranged by us our team of um you've spoken about um universal acceptance and it seems that if it's it would be adversely required um what we're doing to move along a near universal requiring the prenup is education events like this getting the word out and trying as much as we can to influence the public debate and to get people uh aware more aware of the prenup as a as a solution uh and as an effective solution um the answer in terms of percentage we actually conducted a survey of our rca rabbis in 2009 and i don't have the results here it was it was not a hundred percent uh clearly but it was it was a high percent and i could tell you that among the rca rabbis that are rabbis of big shoes that are the more prominent and influential and that perform the more weddings in america i think that you'll find that the vast majority of them either require the use of a prenup or highly encourage the use of a prenup and i also think that the trend is moving in the right direction and as time goes on and as we share more and more stories of the prenup having succeeded in its goal of getting a get in a timely manner more and more rabbis uh become aware of the fact that this is just something they need to require that they need to encourage uh married couples to or marrying couples to sign uh so it's uh it's moving in the right direction i think i i i hope at some point we could say that it's uh it's been universally adopted the truth is that the rca is a diverse has a diverse membership um and uh each rabbi we live in america which is a free country which means that rabbis have the autonomy to make decisions on their own but the rci i i think should be commended for spreading awareness among its rabbis of the prenup for educating its rabbis about the importance of the prenup for passing resolutions year after year about the prenup and for raising awareness among the community the question was whether we've had situations where a couple signed the prenup and then went to a haredi besden for their get how did that bes then deal with the issue of the prenup the answer is that if you go to any besden if both parties present themselves and say we're ready to do a get it's pretty pretty much of a pro forma event you do the get the prenup really comes into play in a situation where one side is prepared to give a get the other side's not prepared to give you a typically where the husband is the recalcitrant party and in those situations let's say for example where a husband insists on going to a different besden and the wife has a prenup in her hand and says i want my get now the prenup solves that problem because the prenup names the bethdan of america as the bethin with authority to determine that case the husband loses his ability to insist on going to another besden that might be more sympathetic to his desire to to delay the giving of the gap so that's one of the in terms of the mechanism of how the prenup works that's really how it works the wife has the benefit of now saying no you have to come to the bathroom of america we could then act unilaterally even without his cooperation uh and start charging him the support obligation if he doesn't give the gap uh the question was whether conservative uh jewish rabbis or conservative judaism except the prenup the answer is it's really a different landscape when you talk about marriages performed by non-orthodox clergy thanks to ramosa feinstein who was a pioneer in this area and really paved the way for for us in terms of dealing with status issues that arise from the need for a get a wedding performed by a non-orthodox clergy person at the end of the day in just about all cases very often if uh if a spouse refuses to participate in the get process there are sort of other ways that we can look at the case and hopefully free the woman to remarry if it wasn't an orthodox wedding obviously it's a case-by-case determination but for that reason non-orthodox weddings present much uh much less of a of a high risk of uh of egon um conservative judaism has kind of solved the aguna problem in their own right because they do things like shin where they just kind of have a magic way of of of solving the problem even if without a get if the husband refuses to give a get so in a sense they don't need the prenup because they could just dissolve the marriage on their own uh through whatever mechanisms they've come up with so so the answer is that the problem of egon doesn't really present itself in the same way in the conservative or reform context and the prenup isn't as necessary in that context um okay the question was whether in the dr maybrook survey or in study uh the signing of a post-nup had any effect on bringing up issues of divorce that's an excellent question i don't know the answer because i don't think it asked about the post up although i guess we'll have to look it's a good question i don't know the answer i don't know the answer yes i'm sorry sure the question was can i explain further what the post-nup is all about post-up is really the equivalent of the prenup but for people who are already married a prenuptial agreement assigned prenuptially before nuptials before marriage a post-op is signed by a couple that's already married who want to sign on to the terms of the prenup and so it's just a very slightly modified document that makes it clear this couple's already married and they're agreeing to to adopt these provisions yeah sure yeah uh the question was whether the best in of america has any influence or ability to convince organizations aligned with the best of america to uh adopt the prenup look the answer is that for organizations aligned with the better america meaning organizations like the ou the rabbinical council of america they have taken great steps in uh promoting the prenup uh beyond that sort of you know centrist orthodox community um we don't necessarily have the influence and ability to get people on board with the prenup we there are dialogues that have taken place over the years um conversations that have taken place we've not been shy about the success of the prenup we try as much as possible to share with the world how the prenup has been successful and we hope that that in the long run will influence others to to adopt it yep families to move outside of the eastern seaboard to explore smaller and sometimes first developing fledgling orthodox communities throughout the country are there states uh the question was the ou has been at the forefront of encouraging people to move to uh more far-flung communities outside of the new york area are there states that were particularly concerned about the enforceability of the prenup you mean generally speaking you know davis poke i should mention the generosity of davis polk and which is ben's law firm in in terms of devoting those hundreds of hours uh this past summer in reviewing the enforceability of the prenup they deserve a lot of credit for that they conducted uh you know when i when we first talked about how we should do this study i identify went on google and i found the nine states with the highest jewish populations it's a fun lunch table game to guess which nine states have the highest jewish populations and they found that in those nine states and i think they went even further and looked at 20 25 states even the laws uh governing the enforceability of pre-optional agreements and specifically this prenuptial agreement were pretty much all on board except for california which has its own rules but other than california everyone's kind of in the same boat there's a uniform prenuptial agreement act that many states have passed and so generally speaking there's not one particular state other than california that that concerns us i wouldn't be worried about moving to a um you know a community in texas for example um even if it's not necessarily one of the you know the states within the nine top jewish population states um so the answer is not really yeah thank you thank i you this whole concept is wonderful and it sounds like it could solve the whole problem but i want to know did the the rca ever sit down in a room with russia yeshivas of mir of all right more right-wing orthodoxy or who said the haredi world in america because that's where the problem is ou is doing a great job enforcing it and so is rca but it's the other end of orthodoxy that i think is a problem did you ever literally sit in a room like this at a table with all the uh the performance the answer is no there's never been a summit where everyone sat around the table but and and i agree you could organize it meaning we're all in favor we're okay we're we're on board meaning rabbi willig will show up and he told me he'll show up any time any place to advocate the prenup he's the man to do it he can speak the halachic lingo and uh but but the truth is the truth is that's the question how do you get them to come so the answer is perhaps you need people uh who are members of their communities to uh to try to organize those kind of uh meetings we're we're we're ready to show up we're happy to participate the revisions i don't know if that's true but but but to some extent they're you know they're have conversation there have been conversations it's not as if we're talking about two completely isolated communities there's there is there are conversations that take place my my experience my experience has been that in situations where a massager caducen who does not otherwise advocate the prenup in situations where he's presented with the prenup and let's say for example the the kawa comes from a family that insists on the prenup they've gotten comfortable with it um indicating that the objection is less harajuku and more cultural in those isolated events where even massage recognition were prominent and have relationships with prominent postgame within the kharadi world situations where they've been presented with the situation they've they've accommodated it they've they've accommodated it so that might be uh perhaps a pathway towards spreading the use of the prenup literally bringing it up on a case-by-case basis as people get married you know to say look i'm a member of your show i'm a member of your community you are my rosh yeshiva you're going to be my messiah conducion but in our family we feel strongly that this is an important document this is an important communal problem and it needs to be solved case by case we we need to sign this prenup and uh and maybe if enough people do that time after time uh in a respectful way uh you know and rep and and cognizant of their hawaiian authority uh but again i think that these are conversations that could take place and there's an accommodation that can be made on a case-by-case basis over and over again that maybe that will help spread the the use of the prenup yep uh we we haven't coordinated with other religious bodies because i think that this problem is a unique one to judaism um oh i understand we were saying i'm sorry the question the question was to what extent have we sought to enlist the support of other faith communities to get state legislatures to be more open to passing legislation that will allow for the enforceability of the prenup yes i i think the answer is that organizations like the ou which have a robust advocacy arm like ou advocacy work with other faith communities on a daily basis to pass legislation and to the extent that we needed to enlist that kind of support we could but the reality of the situation is that the prenup is enforceable under existing laws thankfully um but but i agree that would be a way to go if we needed to if we needed to yep thank you that's a good opening thank you mr man um i i i'll take the opportunity um i'll take the opportunity uh one of the things that the bet in america does is focus on the prenup and resolvaguna cases that's an active part of what we do each and every day it occupies a good amount of my time but another service that we offer to the orthodox community and to the entire jewish community is uh arbitration of commercial cases the is that where jews have a dispute the appropriate venue for resolving that dispute is abbesdan is a jewish court of law and we are unique among the batte din that are out there in terms of the legal professionalism and expertise with which we attack these cases parties that bring cases before us sign a binding arbitration agreement and we conduct proceedings that look very much like secular arbitration proceedings but that are really torah-based dna torah and we issue we staff the cases with panels consisting not only of world renowned tamil ham experts in khoshan mishpat and jewish law but also a mixture of businessmen attorneys some of the dianam are both rabbis and attorneys that's vital because very often the right answer to a case depends not necessarily or not exclusively on how jewish law looks at a problem but on also what secular law has to say about our problem what the common commercial practices that might govern the outcome of a case and so we staff the cases with that diverse group or that diverse uh mixture of expertise we issue reasoned decisions as ben pointed out we most recent over the last few year we started to publish those decisions so you could get a sense of what the decisions look like how they bring that expertise from both kosher mishpat and from secular together in a rational way we are governed by a written set of rules and procedures that look very much like secular arbitration rules and procedures but again our torah-based arbitration uh you can go on our website and read all about this and get a uh download uh you know examples bethan.org but just do one or two more questions because we have to change over the room and bryan weissman's available to he's very engaging i know but he'll be available to take any questions afterwards please 20 years have you adjusted the five that's a good question i'll repeat the question the question was 20 years ago when rabbi wood first went to israel to secure the support of some of the godown for the prenup the fine was set at a certain low amount have we adjusted that and i shouldn't say fine the support obligation was set at a certain low amount have we adjusted the support obligation since then for inflation so first of all it's important to note that the agreement itself contemplates inflation and adjusts the daily support amount based on the consumer price index so if you got married in 2004 and the rate was 150 per day now it'll be about a hundred seventy dollars per day uh based on inflation uh we the original agreement that was first published in 1994 set the rate or set the support allocation at a hundred dollars per day in the early 2000s the form raised it to 150 dollars per day so now the standard form sets the support obligation uh at the date of marriage at 150 dollars per day and then it adjusts for inflation thereafter we're ready we're ready to peg it up to the next increment which will probably be about 200 a day but we haven't quite hit that yet in terms of inflation we check about every year or two and we're hovering now if you if you figure that 150 a day as of 2003 when i think it was set we're now like 170 or 180 and we don't want to jump the gun but probably in a few years we'll we'll jump it up to 200. the question is what what do you do about a situation where someone's judgment proof or so wealthy that they don't really care i worry more about the judgment-proof cases than the someone who's so wealthy they don't even care because what we found is that even really really wealthy people don't want to pay their ex-wife fifty thousand dollars a year they just don't like doing that uh judgment-proof people those are the cases that really scare me you know a few years ago we had a case of a guy who was declining to give a get he had signed a prenup and he was just he was living out of his car he was on drugs he was like completely off the grid and i really worried about that case and thankfully the case resolved itself we part of the solution was that we were able to get him into the room thanks to the prenup the prenup itself just got us and got him into the room a person like that who was in touch with all sorts of uh characters in a case without a prenup he would have named some other bes then he would have said i want to go to you know some desden that my uncle has in his basement uh you know it would have been a really difficult situation even to issue a seder against a guy like that but because he had signed the prenup we were able to get in the room and the day on him rabbi can be really really charming and uh convincing when he's dealing with the again he's really very good at that and that that worked he the guy gave the get so those are the cases i worry about and the answer is that the prenup won't solve every last case it's been enormously successful but it won't solve every last case but it's an entirely different problem communally when you have a problem that affects a few people than when you have a systemic problem that affects many uh and in that sense i think the prenup is really the solution to the problem we want to thank rabbi weissman and we want to thank the orthodox union i should have mentioned the orthodox union is the largest supporter uh financially and otherwise to the basement of america and we appreciate that and we appreciate dr tannenbaum allowing us and giving us this forum uh roy weissman will be available for questions now thank you