Marriage and Divorce Laws
Further information: Marriage in IsraelSince the establishment of the state, Israeli law gives jurisdiction for matters of personal status, including marriage and divorce, to the rabbinical courts. In these courts, which operate according to halakha (Torah law), a Jewish woman is allowed to initiate divorce proceedings, but her husband must give his consent to make the divorce final. If the husband disappears or refuses to grant the divorce, the wife is considered an "agunah" (lit. "chained woman") and may not remarry or give birth to halakhically legitimate children. Rabbinical tribunals may, and sometimes do, sanction a husband who refused divorce, but still do not grant a divorce without his consent.
A Muslim woman may petition for and receive a divorce through the Sharia courts without her husband's consent under certain conditions, and a marriage contract may provide for other circumstances in which she may obtain a divorce without her husband's consent. A Muslim man may divorce his wife without her consent and without petitioning the court.
Christians may seek official separations or divorces, depending on the denomination, through ecclesiastical courts.
Read more about this topic: Israeli Women
Famous quotes containing the words marriage, divorce and/or laws:
“Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.”
—Peter De Vries (20th century)
“Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“Private property is held sacred in all good governments, and particularly in our own. Yet shall the fear of invading it prevent a general from marching his army over a cornfield or burning a house which protects the enemy? A thousand other instances might be cited to show that laws must sometimes be silent when necessity speaks.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)