One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת יִבּוּם וַחֲלִיצָה
Levirate Marriage and Release · Chapter 3
Sefer Nashim · Whose Word Is Taken • One Witness • Two Widows • When She Must Wait
1
Witness: enough to
establish a death
5
Women whose word
is never accepted
90
Days a yevamah waits
before either rite
9
Months before chalitzah
where a co-wife may bear
Part 1Whose Word Is Taken, and Which Way It Points
- Sons yes, brothers no. A man's statement that he has a son, or sons, is accepted and releases his wife from yibbum and chalitzah. His statement that he has a brother, or brothers, is not accepted, and his wife does not become forbidden to others, since we assume he meant to forbid her to other men after his death. (3:1-2)
- A presumption outlasts a deathbed. Where it is already presumed that he has brothers, his statement at the time of death that he has none is not accepted, nor is his denial that a presumed brother is his brother. (3:3)
- A rumor of witnesses stops her. Where no presumption existed but a report circulates that there are witnesses overseas who will testify that he has brothers, she must take it into account and wait until those witnesses are brought and questioned, even if he denied having a brother as he died. (3:3)
- A disputed child cuts both ways. Where a man claims he fathered a child born outside marriage, the son is his for inheritance but the matter stays in doubt for yibbum, since she could have been with another man. So his widow performs chalitzah, in case the child was not his, and may not perform yibbum, in case it was. (3:4)
RememberThe same mouth is trusted and distrusted in one chapter. A word that releases her is taken; a word that binds her is not.
Part 2One Witness, and Whom the Leniency Was Built For
- One witness is enough. A single witness establishes the death of her husband so she may perform yibbum, the death of her yavam, or that her husband fathered a son, which permits her to remarry with no chalitzah. A servant, a woman, or a gentile speaking in the midst of conversation is accepted for a yavam's death. (3:5)
- The five who are not believed. The five women barred from testifying to a husband's death are equally barred as to a yavam's, since they are presumed to hate her: her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law's daughter, her husband's other wife, her yevamah and her husband's daughter. Disparities between witnesses are judged by the same rules. (3:6)
- Nobody is believed about what they want. A yevamah is not believed that her yavam died, since that prohibition carries only lashes and she may regard it casually. A yavam is not believed that his brother died, lest he desired her. Nor a woman that her sister died, nor a man that his wife died, where the point is marrying the sister. (3:11)
- Two witnesses where nobody is stranded. Before one sister may enter the household of the other's husband, two witnesses must testify to the death, because the single-witness leniency was granted only so that a woman who would otherwise remain unmarried could be permitted to marry. (3:11)
RememberThe bar of proof is not fixed. It is set by what the doubt would cost the person who cannot move.
Part 3Two Widows and a Brother Nobody Can Prove Dead
- Each is bound by the other. Two widows, each married to one of two brothers, return from overseas and each reports her own husband's death. Both are forbidden to remarry, since each woman's yavam is the other's husband, and a yevamah's word on that death is not accepted. (3:7)
- Children break the tie. Where one of the two has children and the other is childless, the one with children may remarry, since her release never depended on whether her yavam is alive; the childless one remains forbidden. (3:9)
- A third brother resolves both. If another brother is living, he performs yibbum or chalitzah with both women. (3:9)
- Marriage frees them, his death does not. If that yavam married them and then died, they are forbidden again exactly as before, since their husbands' deaths were never adequately established. If he married and then divorced them, they are free to marry other men. (3:10)
RememberHer own husband is rarely the obstacle. What binds a childless widow is the brother she cannot prove is dead.
Part 4When the Court Makes Her Wait
- The mouth that forbade permits. Where she left with her husband alone and returns saying a yavam was born to her overseas and then died, her word is accepted in either order of the deaths, since the statement that would bind her is the only source of the obligation. Where she left with her husband and her yavam, her word is not accepted at all. (3:12)
- Order of death, partly credited. "My husband died and then my son" is accepted, since she left presumed free to remarry. "My son died and then my husband" is not accepted as grounds for yibbum, but is credited enough that she performs chalitzah and not yibbum. (3:13-14)
- Sometimes neither rite. That chalitzah is permitted only where she was already forbidden to the priesthood, as a divorcee or a chalalah, or where she says they were alone in a cave. Otherwise she performs neither rite and stays bound until witnesses come, lest an onlooker conclude that a priest may marry a chalutzah. (3:15-16)
- Which pregnancies she must consider. She need not suspect that a mother-in-law overseas bore a son before her husband died, nor that a son overseas predeceased him. But a mother-in-law who left while pregnant must be waited out, since a yavam may have been born before the death. (3:17-18)
RememberTold the deaths in the wrong order, a woman who remarried must leave him and her children are legitimate; a woman who performed yibbum has children who are not.