Prenups Meant to Solve the Problem of the Agunah: Toward Compensation, Not "Mediation"

Abstract

This article begins by providing an overview of the prenups examined in the author's 1999 article, "Sign at Your Own Risk: The 'RCA' Prenuptial May Prejudice the Fairness of Your Future Divorce Settlement," adding three important prenups introduced since 1999: the 2004 Agreement for Mutual Respect, the 2013 revised RCA prenup and the 2015 Tzohar prenup. It goes on to survey the different ways that non-ecclesiastical state civil courts in the U.S. and Israel have championed the cause of agunot, including compensating them for the harms they have endured. The article offers an explanation for why prenups have, to date, been reluctant to provide clear and unambiguous relief to Jewish women, and, finally, it proposes a draft of a prenup written by the Center for Women's Justice, an Israeli NGO founded and run by the author. The CWJ prenup () allows for compensatory relief via a secular civil court in the event of get refusal. The revised Lookstein prenup () provides for similar relief.