To obtain a ‘get’ from my ‘ex’ I agreed in our divorce agreement to free him from paying maintenance for our son. The divorce agreement was authorised and incorporated into a judgment. Sometime after we divorced my husband and I signed another agreement in which he undertook to pay our son maintenance ‘ without infringing ‘ his compensation rights under the divorce agreement. My ‘ex’ paid our son maintenance until he reached 18 and now he has brought legal action against me claiming back a sum equivalent to all the maintenance money he had paid out for our son – plus linkage and interest ! Is he entitled to this from me ?
By: דיאנה שאלתיאל•Published on: 10 May, 2022No ! In a judgment made by the Jerusalem Family Court in August 1999 it was held that despite the principle deriving from contract law that a divorce agreement should be enforced as any other contract, there are exceptional situations . One such exceptional situation is where the agreement conditions the husband’s consent to granting of his wife a ‘get’ upon her agreeing to free him of his child maintenance obligation… and entitles him to compensation if this undertaking is broken. This condition infringes society’s is not in the public interest, the court held, cancelling the compensation clause.
Incidentally, nowadays it is very unlikely that a court would authorise an agreement which would deprive children of their maintenance, in the first place.