|
Marriage When the Groom is Agun (not divorced from his former wife)
Question
A close friend of my wife recently announced that she is pregnant and that she is getting married to the child's father on December 19th. She asked me to perform the wedding. The father is a man who has lived away from his first wife for the past eight years but there has never been a religious divorce. The groom is saying that his first wife does not want to give the GET (they were married in Israel) or that she would agree if he agrees to pay her a certain sum (apparently US$ 1,000.00). My wife's friend says that she will not wait because she is pregnant, wants to marry as soon as possible and has asked me to celebrate the wedding. From what I have been able to study, there has to be a divorce before this marriage but the divorce faces two difficulties: the time frame and the resistance of the groom's first wife. I would be most grateful if you could help think this out and find a way to help my wife's friend find a reasonable arrangement for her life.
Answer
Since polygamy has been forbidden by Jewish Law since the enactment of Rabenu Gershom Meor Hagola, this man must be divorced before he remarries (in some exceptional circumstances, as when a woman becomes mentally incapable of understanding enough to accept the get, a man can be granted a permission to marry a second wife but he needs the signatures from 100 Rabbis stating that his situation is exceptional). My advice is to try to convince the former wife to accept the get. This could be done with the help of people who know her and who could influence her. She is in a worse situation than her former husband, because if she has children without being divorced, those children are mamzerim (bastard), which is not true for the groom. I am fairly certain there is a way to convince her without succumbing to giving her money as blackmail. The groom can write a get in the name of his former wife and leave it with a beit din who will give it to her when she is ready to accept it.
Good luck,
Rabbi Monique Susskind Goldberg
November 2006
FURTHER QUESTION
|
|
