[Avodah] Conditions upon a gett

[David Riceman]

RM:

> However my question concerns something I have not heard of before - whether it is halachically valid for a bet din to unilaterally impose a condition on a gett, requiring the parties to the gett to agree to it in advance by including it as a clause on the application form that the parties must sign as a prerequisite to initiating gett proceedings at the bet din.

I misread this the first time through.  Your second and third "it"s in that sentence refer not to the get, but to the unspecified clause.  It seems like you're asking us to play a guessing game.  Is the clause intrinsic to a normal get, is it a local custom, or is it something that the particular Beit Din in question is trying to set as a new standard?

I'm certainly no expert, but it seems invalid because there's no kinyan at the time of signature, and there's no reciprocal consideration.  In general the western custom of signing contracts to indicate an agreement does not have a neat parallel in Halacha.

> 
>  (If the above link does not work for you on first attempt, close the browser tab and try a second time.)

I think you're obscuring details, probably for very good reason, but that leaves your question vague enough to be incomprehensible (though maybe not to an expert).  And I didn't see a link in the post.
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> This is not a hypothetical question. There is a gett application pending before that bet din in which one of the parties has crossed out the offending clause in the application form. This occurred in the presence of the bet din's registrar, presumably at the signing and submission of the application form, which must have been done in person. I don't have any information as to whether this will result in the bet din refusing to take on the case or whether it will proceed regardless of that party's rejection of the offending clause.
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> I would like to know: (a) if the bet din would be halachically justified in taking the former course and, (b) whether, if a couple signed the application form without protesting that clause, but, after the gett was executed, one or both of them violated the terms in that clause, the bet din could, halachically, rescind the gett? My insinct tells me that the answer to (b) is most likely no. I am not so sure about (a).

If this mysterious clause represents an attempt of the Beit Din to legislate, then details matter a lot.  The custom of the Jews of Eastern Europe was that the kehillah, representatives of the households, could legislate, but the courts could not.  The Jews of Central Europe, and most other places, were more authoritarian.  Is this the only court in the region? What is its halachic lineage? Talmudic law does not require a court for a get; suppose this couple found a sofer and two eidim and executed a get without the offending clause (EH 123).  Lechatchila we in New Jersey would expect them to go before a Beit Din, but would the get be invalid b'diavad? Would the court in question consider the get invalid?

David Riceman