[Avodah] [Areivim] short marriage

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 12:40:15AM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> : According to R Broyde's article, this is not the case.  Rather, the
> : Rackman "beis din" relies on "mekach ta'us", but makes no attempt to
> : ascertain the facts, and will always "find" grounds for annulment,
> : whether they exist or not.
> 
> RERackman undid tav lemeisiv, saying it doesn't apply in the modern world,
> and therefore opened the door for far more marriages to be declared ta'us
> -- the minimum required for "had I known I never would have married him"
> was lowered.

"Tav lemeisav" isn't directly relevant to whether the mekach was a
ta'us in the first place.  A woman might prefer to put up with a
bad deal rather than be divorced, but she would much rather not have
married the man in the first place, and still be a single women with
all her prospects in front of her, able to find a husband without
the defects she has found in her current one.

Rather, "tav lemeisav" comes into play when we consider whether, once
she did marry him and discovered his secret, she might have accepted
it, "gamra daatah", and only later come to regret that decision.
"Tav lemeisav" is a reason why she might have done so.  Without this
principle there would be a strong presumption that any woman who found
out about her husband's defects *must* have rejected him and regretted
the marriage, and if she didn't leave him immediately it must be for
some side reason.  With "tav lemeisav" the presumption goes the other
way; *if* she finds out and doesn't leave him, then we have a strong
presumption that she accepted her lot, however reluctantly, because
it seemed better than living the rest of her life as a spinster.

But "tav lemeisav" is far from an absolute.  If it were a universal
truth then there would be no such thing as a woman demanding a get,
at least unless she had already picked out her next husband.  "Tav
lemeisav" is indeed a proverb among women, even today: one of my
friends was taught it by her (non-Jewish) mother as "don't throw out
dirty water until you've got some clean".  But if the water carries
cholera you're better off with none at all.  Halacha recognises a
whole list of conditions which a woman would rather be single than
put up with.  They are so bad that if they arise during a marriage
we compel the husband to give a get.  So if we were to have evidence
that one of these conditions existed before the marriage, and that
the wife didn't know about it, and that *as soon as she found out*
she wanted out of the marriage (whether or not she actually left),
why *wouldn't* we annul it?  And indeed R Broyde writes that he has
annulled such marriages, multiple times, and that it is (at least
figuratively) ma'asim bechol yom to do so.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher