One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
גירושין
Gerushin 8
Sefer Nashim · Divorce · The conditional get: how a condition is attached, what a condition may never reserve, and the single test that voids a divorce, that the bond was not severed.
4
Formal rules every condition must meet
1
Excluded name voids the get
1
Day, when no duration is stated
200
Zuz, the chapter's standing condition
Part 1How a Condition Is Attached
- The four rules, imported from Ishut 6. A stipulation must be twofold, positive stated before negative, mentioned before the act it governs is completed, and possible to comply with. Fail any one and the condition is nullified entirely, which means the get simply works with no condition on it (8:1)
- Two forms, two different legal worlds. With the twofold wording, the divorce begins only when the condition is fulfilled, so he may still nullify the get or change the condition, and his death or the burning of the get kills the divorce. With "from this day" or "on the condition that," the divorce is retroactive to delivery, he can no longer nullify or add, and she fulfills the condition even after his death (8:1)
- No seclusion while the condition hangs. He must not enter privacy with her until it is fulfilled; dealings happen before a witness, and a servant or maidservant suffices, but not her own maidservant or her young son, before whom she would not be embarrassed. Seclusion before two witnesses leaves the divorce in doubt even if the condition is later fulfilled, since they may have resumed relations and nullified the get (8:2)
- The document may not carry the condition. He may not tell the scribe to write a conditional get, and certainly not have the condition inscribed. The scribe writes a clean get, the witnesses sign, and only then is the condition spoken on delivery. Written in after the essential portion, the get is acceptable; written or even spoken before it, the divorce is in doubt, because the husband retains rights in the essential matter of the get (8:3-4)
RememberThe paper is allowed to say one thing only: that she is permitted to any man. The reservation lives outside it or not at all.
Part 2Any Man, Except
- One excluded name voids the get. "You are permitted to any man aside from so and so" is void where that man could consecrate her, even where relations with him carry a prohibition short of annulling a marriage, and even where he is a minor, since the minor will reach majority. The get is acceptable where the named man is a gentile, a servant, her father, her brother, or the husband's father or brother, because no bond with them was ever possible (8:5)
- Her sister's husband leaves it in doubt. Relations with him are forbidden now, but her sister may die and the marriage become available, so the exception is not empty (8:5)
- The catalogue of small reservations, all doubtful. Except a man not yet born. Except promiscuous relations. Except anal intercourse. Except one who consecrates her by document, so money and relations work and a document does not. Except his right to annul her vows. Except her eating terumah through him, or his inheriting her property should she die first. Each leaves the status of the divorce in doubt (8:6)
- Repairing a named exclusion, word by word. After "any man except Reuven and Shimon," taking the get back and saying "you are permitted to Reuven or Shimon" makes it acceptable. Saying only "permitted to Reuven" leaves it void, since Shimon's bar stands. Saying "permitted to Shimon" or "even to Shimon" leaves it in doubt. And "today you are not my wife but tomorrow you will be" is no divorce, which is why the get reads from this day onward (8:7-9)
RememberReleased to every man on earth minus one name is not released. The size of the exception is never the question; whether anything is inside it is.
Part 3Conditions With an End, and Conditions Without
- A lifetime restriction is not a condition. "Never drink wine for the rest of your life" is no divorce, because the bond is not severed; "for as long as I live" or "as long as so and so lives" is effective, since at that death nothing connects them. Thirty days of not visiting her father's house is effective; never is not. "Never marry so and so" is void; "not for fifty years" is effective, and if she marries him the divorce is undone retroactively (8:10-12)
- He may not aim her either. "On condition that you marry so and so" is effective if she does, but the Sages ruled she should marry neither him, lest people say men give each other their wives as presents, nor anyone else, since the get takes effect only on fulfillment. Marrying another first nullifies the get, she must leave the second husband, and the children are illegitimate (8:13)
- Keeping the paper keeps the marriage. "This is your get, but the paper is mine" is no divorce; "on condition that you give me the paper" is effective once she gives it. A get engraved on a gold plate may serve as both the divorce and the ketubah payment, provided the plate is worth the ketubah, with the husband making up any shortfall (8:14-15)
- Duration, deadlines, and waiving. A condition with no stated duration means one day: work for him, serve his father, or nurse his son for one day within the child's first twenty four months. If the father or son dies first, or the father refuses her service, the condition fails and there is no divorce. Two hundred zuz within thirty days must be given inside the period and accepted willingly; and if he announces he waives the money, the divorce fails, because he imposed the condition to distress her and she was never distressed (8:19-21)
- A named object cannot be bought off. "On condition that you give me this utensil" is not satisfied by a thousand zuz in its place if the utensil is lost or stolen; only the object itself, or his outright nullification of the condition, completes the divorce. Where no time was specified and he dies, she cannot pay his heirs, and the get is not nullified, so chalitzah is required before she remarries (8:22-23)
RememberThe law never weighs what the restriction is about. It weighs whether the string has an end.