Daily Talk
A wife signs a note, confirmed by a binding act, telling the buyer of her husband's field that she has no claim against him, and the Rambam lets her take the field anyway because she can say she only wrote it to please her husband. But if she once refused such a request, her signature now holds. Why should a single refusal be what makes every later agreement real?
The No That Makes the Yes
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About This Talk
Chapter 17 orders the claims on an estate that cannot pay everyone, ruling that the first wife collects before later wives and a promissory note by its date, that land bought after the marriages and loans is divided equally because every lien fell on it at once, that a creditor is paid before a divorcee or widow because he lost money and she lost nothing, and that four ketubot of four hundred, three hundred, two hundred and one hundred share an estate of eight hundred as two hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty, two hundred and one hundred. It then weighs promises and signatures, freeing a guarantor who meant a kindness while binding a father and anyone who underwrote the marriage, requiring a vow against collusion before collection from an underwriter or the Temple treasury, letting a wife expropriate a field despite her written waiver because she signed to please her husband unless she had once refused, and sending two wives and a purchaser around a circle until they compromise. It closes on the widow as seller, whose private sale at value binds while an appraisal she pays to herself is void even after an announcement, whose sale of land worth one hundred and one for one hundred is undone, and on the difference between selling a ketubah and waiving it, which forfeits everything by words alone if they are meant seriously.