Maintenance / Child Support

The Supreme Court has held that alternative accommodation should matched to the previous level of housing, but it is possible to take into account that the number of inhabitants will be smaller following the marital rift, when deciding on the size of the new home, or the number of rooms. In other words, the new home may be smaller.

Yes! The Supreme Court has held that in principle a wife is entitled to alternative accommodation as part of her maintenance after the family home is sold, but her financial situation afterwards should be taken into account .

Yes!  Although it is true that a spouse cannot be forced to give or accept a ‘get’ for fear of interfering with the validity of the divorce which must be freely given and freely accepted, a wife is bound by her contractual undertaking to forego part of her maintenance. She will be entitled to the reduced amount referred to in her divorce agreement, although her actual consent to divorce in the same agreement cannot be enforced.

No. A Jewish wife who undertakes to forego her maintenance if she fails to turn up at the rabbinical court for her divorce ceremony is not entitled to file for her maintenance at the family court if she does not appear to receive her get as she undertook. While nothing can be done to enforce a Jewish spouse’s consent to divorce ,even if written , as this would invalidate the ‘get’ which must be given and accepted out of free will, a wife’s obligation to forego her maintenance will still hold.

In certain circumstances a wife may lose her right to maintenance under Jewish law if she refuses to have intimate relations with her husband. If she refuses on purpose to cause him sorrow without any reasonable cause, or because she has her eye on another man, then she can lose her maintenance rights. However, if her refusal is due to her husband’s negative behaviour towards her she will not lose her rights.

Yes.

Only after the rabbinical court makes positive findings about her adultery. It is not sufficient for it to oblige her to divorce . It must decide that she must divorce her husband, and reach clear decisions of fact relating to her adultery. The ruling must become final – i.e. no longer appealable. This means that either the time for the wife to appeal against the finding of adultery has already gone by , or if she did appeal against it in time, she actually lost. Then, only when she refuses to obey the final , unappealable ruling to actually divorce will the husband be entitled to be freed of his obligation to support her set by the family court in maintenance proceedings she opened there previously.

No! Once a rabbinical court rules that a wife has committed adultery then she loses her right to maintenance from her husband completely. It is final and she will be prevented from being entitled to maintenance at the family court even if she actually opens a file there.

Yes! Under Jewish law if a wife has been proved to have committed adultery then she loses her right to financial support from her husband. This is so even if he himself has committed adultery – or does so now on a regular basis .

At the family court a photograph of this nature will probably not be sufficient, unless it is really explicit and intimate, and it clearly cannot be mistaken for a social gesture. However, if the maintenance proceedings are at the rabbinical court, and not the family court, the risk of the wife losing maintenance based on evidence short of direct evidence of explicit sexual acts, is arguably greater.