Ketubah – everything you need to know!
The ketubah is a legal document that accompanies the wedding ceremony and consecration, and details the husband’s obligations towards his wife during their marriage, as well as his financial obligations after the termination of the marriage due to divorce or death.
Some claim that the origin of the obligation in the ketubah stems from the Bible, and that it was later amended by the sages of the Oral Torah with the aim of protecting women from being expelled by their husbands through significant sums of money that the husband was required to pay to his wife in circumstances in which he decided to divorce her, on the grounds “so that it would not be easy for him to expel her.”
The ketubah is an integral part of the religious marriage ceremony, and is signed in the presence of two witnesses who are also present during its delivery to the woman. Although the ketubah is read at one of the most emotional moments in every person’s life, it is not a love letter.
For a personal conversation with a lawyer, call: 077-997-4020
Our sages actually understood the fact that we all tend to forget during moments of supreme happiness that love alone is not enough, and they drafted the first Jewish financial agreement.
The ketubah was introduced at a time when the burden of earning a living was largely on the man, and women rarely worked outside their homes. At that time, it was also customary for the assets that brides brought with them to be transferred to the management and possession of their son-in-law, and the ketubah prevented the almost complete dispossession of all of the bride’s property in the circumstances of Divorce Or widowhood.
What do you write and how do you formulate the ketubah?
The language of the Ketubah is Aramaic, which was a common language at the time of its composition.
In general, there are no substantial and significant differences between the inscriptions and their translations in the various testimonies, except for the difference inherent in the wording of the bride’s status.
In the Ashkenazi ketubah, there is a reference to the difference between first marriages in which the bride is defined as a virgin, compared to marriages that are not first, while in the ketubah of the Eastern Jewish community, there is no reference to the issue at all.
The ketubah has three parts, which include the husband’s obligations, the guarantees for the fulfillment of the obligations, and signatures.
The husband’s obligations in the ketubah are for the wife’s maintenance, for the ketubah fee and the ketubah supplement, as well as for the dowry and the dowry supplement.
Detail of the sections of the ketubah
The ketubah deed has eight sections, with the first section referring to the place where the ketubah was drawn up and the date.
The second section refers to Obligation Alimony The woman during her marriage, when her maintenance includes taking care of her material existence, including a place to live, clothing, and medical care.
The ketubah fee and ketubah supplement in the third section concern the amount of payment that the wife receives in circumstances where the dissolution of the marriage results from the husband’s will or following his death.
The stated amount is the minimum rate for payment, and its value was determined by the Sages according to the value of the currency and local customs, with the amount of the ketubah fee intended to enable the woman to live on it for one year.
Today, according to this law, The Main Rabbinate The minimum amount from time to time. A written addition refers to an additional amount of money that can be added according to local custom and the husband’s wishes.
The dowry and dowry supplement clause concerns the assets that the wife brings with her at the time of her marriage. These assets are recorded in the ketubah, and the husband is obligated to return them to the wife upon the dissolution of the marriage, and according to their value at the time of the wedding. The fifth clause of the ketubah lists the “merchant assets” the assets that the wife brought and in which he is permitted to trade.
The sixth section constitutes the summary of all the amounts, with the last component of the ketubah including the guarantees that the husband provides to fulfill his obligations. The ketubah includes the signatures of the husband and witnesses for verification and validity.
The Ketubah in the Rabbinical Court and the Family Court
Article 17 Law Financial Relations of 5773 among spouses concerns the relationship between the ketubah and the financial relationship agreement from a constitutional perspective, and instructs that the law does not derogate from the rights of the woman based on her address or according to the amendment to the Family Law (alimony) of 5779, and the provisions of Section 101 of the Land Law of 5779.
This means that the ketubah does not serve as a merely symbolic document, but is anchored in Israeli civil legislation as a contractual document for every matter, and has broad legal implications in financial relations between the couple.
Furthermore, Section 2 of the Financial Relations Law states that Agreement Finance A marriage contract that was concluded before the couple arrived at the time of the marriage requires approval from the religious court or the family court, and will be verified by the marriage registrar at the time of the marriage.
This means that when the ketubah is drawn up and signed in front of the witnesses and the Order of Kiddushin, the financial agreement that was signed by virtue of the Law on Financial Relations is also required to be presented to the Order of Kiddushin and signed as part of the conditions associated with the ketubah.
It is important to emphasize that according to contract law, a contract that was prepared and signed at a later time has greater legal weight than contracts signed before it.
therefore Agreement Finance, even if it was signed and approved by a legal entity before the marriage, if its provisions contradict the provisions of the ketubah, which was drawn up and signed at the time of the marriage in terms of alimony and finances, and if the husband did not present the financial agreement during the signing of the ketubah, and did not bind it as a “written document of conditions” to the ketubah, the financial agreement may not be valid.
In other words, the financial agreement made before signing the ketubah will be binding in terms of personal law only if it is bound by the ketubah signed on the wedding day.
Denial of the woman’s address rights
A woman facing a divorce is not entitled to anything under Judaism except what is stated in the ketubah, while the law of property relations is based on the equal division of the couple’s property. However, the law of property relations does not seek to cancel the rights of a woman based on her address, and it is possible that in certain circumstances a woman will be entitled both based on her address and the law of property relations.
However, in certain cases, the wife will be deprived of her rights relating to the “main ketubah” and the “supplementary ketubah.” The circumstances in which the husband is exempted from the obligation to pay according to the ketubah are varied, and include solid evidence that ties the wife to the deed. betrayal In her husband, or alternatively an “act of ugliness”, in which there is no conclusive evidence of infidelity, but there is an especially high probability that the woman did indeed cheat.
Additional circumstances that exempt the husband from the obligation to keep the ketubah are “a purchase of error,” in which the wife concealed from her husband before marriage some defect, usually health-related, which, if it had been revealed in advance, would have annulled the marriage.
Additional grounds for not maintaining the woman’s address are a “rebellious woman,” who refuses to have marital relations with her husband as part of her duties as a wife, a woman who fails her husband in terms of Torah prohibitions, or situations in which the woman leaves the couple’s home without a justifiable reason.
Likewise, if the wife wishes to divorce or both spouses are interested in this, and the wife has no claims that the husband is unfaithful or rebellious, or that the ketubah is fundamentally invalid, she will be denied the rights of the “principle of the ketubah” and the “supplementary ketubah.”
It is important to note that in all the circumstances raised here, the woman always retains her right to the dowry.
Women’s rights
In principle, the constitutional status of the ketubah deed is that of a promissory note, and in certain circumstances the woman may be entitled to both half of the property and her address.
In situations where the husband requests a divorce for unjustified reasons such as “love is over,” and there is no mutual desire to obtain a divorce, while the wife submits her own petition. A lawsuit for home peaceIf, and the rabbinical court is indeed convinced of the woman’s sincerity that this is her true desire, the chances that the husband will be charged, as a condition of divorce, with the payment due to the wife as signed in the ketubah increase significantly.
However, there is a possibility that the woman will be entitled to her address even in situations where she is the one who initiates the divorce, such as impotence on the part of the husband and the inability to start a family, or a disability on the part of the husband that she did not know about before they married.
In principle, upon the death of the husband, the widow is entitled to choose between the amount allocated to her in the ketubah by her husband and her share in the estate. According to the regulations of the Chief Rabbinate for 2009, a maximum rate for the addition to the ketubah is set, with no minimum rate specified, and the husband is entitled to record in the ketubah an amount of only 200 zuz.
The addition to the ketubah and the addition to the dowry are additions that the husband is not obligated to agree to in advance, but when the stage of dissolution of the marriage is reached, they may be calculated in practice, and the husband’s claims that the amounts specified in the ketubah were merely a symbolic act and that he did not understand the constitutional meaning of the ketubah are not acceptable.
Examples of court rulings
One of the rulings concerns an issue that discusses a woman’s entitlement to collect her address based on her rights arising from a financial relationship agreement concluded before the couple’s wedding.
The applicant and the deceased were married in a wedding ceremony and a wedding ceremony in 1997, which was the deceased’s second marriage, after the death of his first wife, to whom he had been married for approximately thirty years, and to whom he had three children.
During his first marriage, the deceased established a company to manufacture metal products with the assistance of his family members. After the death of his first wife, the deceased met the applicant, and after approximately three years of acquaintance, the two asked to marry.
In the financial agreement that was made before the couple got married and approved At home Family Law It was determined that the property accumulated by each of them would be separated, except for half of the rights in the house where the two lived and which the husband purchased with his own money, as well as the severance pay due to the husband in the event of his death.
The deceased and the applicant married each other about a week after the agreement was drawn up, and at the wedding, the deed of his new wife’s address was worth 3,000,000 NIS. About a year and a half later, the deceased passed away, and in 1999, the The will , and the widow received assets worth a little over two million shekels.
A few months later, the woman initiated proceedings to claim the amount specified in her ketubah, claiming that the ketubah was a legal obligation in addition to her other rights. The respondents, on the other hand, claimed that the amount was more than half the value of the estate, a claim based on the “tulitola principle” in Jewish law.
The court ruled that in circumstances where the debt on the deed is higher than half of the estate, the plaintiff may choose between the financial agreement and only half of the value of the husband’s estate.
Another case involved a couple who were married in a chuppa and kiddushin in 1998, during which time they had two children. In 2010, the husband filed for divorce in the Rabbinical Court on allegations of financial fraud, but the divorce suit was dismissed due to a lack of halachic evidence.
The husband filed an appeal in 2011 before the Great Rabbinical Court based on his claim that his wife was cheating on him and living with a foreign man.
The husband presented evidence he obtained through private investigators who followed the woman, according to which she was seen cuddling and kissing a strange man, and sleeping in his apartment during various periods.
The husband had photos and videos that proved that while the woman was in the man’s apartment, no one except them entered the apartment, and the same was true when she left the apartment. The court ruled to cancel the alimony and the ketubah deed on the grounds of “an act of ugliness.”
Questions about the ketubah? Want to speak to a lawyer?
Click here to receive personal legal advice before divorce!
