A Divorce Held in Trust

About This Talk

Gerushin 9 separates a conditional get from a get deferred to a time or an act and then draws every consequence. In a conditional divorce the act has already been performed and only awaits completion, so the document need merely exist when the condition is met, she need not take hold of it, and a woman who remarried early need not leave her second husband; a get that takes effect after thirty days, or on payment of two hundred zuz, is not a divorce at all but an entrusted object, so it must be in her possession, taken up by her then, or lying in a place she designated, and a woman who remarried early must leave and the child is illegitimate. Because it is not a condition none of the formal requirements of conditions apply, including restating it in positive and negative form; if the husband dies or the get is lost or burned in the interim she is not divorced, while a get she set at the side of the public domain and that was stolen after the thirty days still divorces her, since it existed on the day it took effect and the sides of the public domain are not the public domain. A sentence containing only a failure clause, that the get is not effective or that she is not divorced if she does not pay, performs no divorce whatever, and the chapter supplies the correct form, both halves spoken. Where a condition turns on his return the claim of forces beyond his control is not accepted, so the man stopped by illness or a flooded river is divorced even over his protest and his evident wish otherwise; where a condition turns on her will we suspect he appeased her into waiving it unless he accepted her word in advance, a suspicion limited to a marriage that was consummated. Of the death formulas, if I die is void since there is no divorce after death, from the present time if I die is valid, from the present time followed by after my death leaves her status in doubt, the sun emerging from its shield fails where the condition that the sun shine succeeds, a mortally ill man who divorces and recovers cannot retract because a divorce is not his gift, a death by collapsing house, snake or lion defeats a get conditioned on dying from this illness, and a man who rose and walked the marketplace before relapsing requires an assessment; through the interim days she is a divorced woman in all respects provided he does not enter into privacy with her, a sick man is given a repeated formula with the positive before the negative and no opening on misfortune, and a get a colleague was told to acquire on her behalf to spare her yibbum leaves her status in doubt if the husband dies before it reaches her, since the benefit is a benefit for most women and not all. The last stretch is agency: a get written before the time the husband set is void and one delayed past its window is unacceptable, with after a month meaning the first week of the coming month and before the Sabbath meaning Wednesday through Friday; privacy with her after the instruction stops the writing altogether; ten men told to write produce one writer, all of you binds every one of them, the first two signatures are the real witnesses so an unfit later one does no harm while an unfit first one makes the get unacceptable and a death before signing voids it, and witnesses sign in each other's presence lest she be handed a document that only looks finished; place and manner mark the limit of an agent's authority, so delivery outside a named place fails while a mere statement of where she is does not bind, her agent appointed to receive in a named place cannot receive elsewhere while her agent appointed to bring may bring from anywhere, writers told to hand it to a named agent effect nothing by delivering it themselves, and an agent stopped by circumstances beyond his control may appoint another unless the husband made the task personal or attached an article to be collected first.