Hello Everyone,
last week we began our discussion of prenuptial agreements which are designed to avoid situations of women being trapped in marriages- agunot.
One type of agreement which had been suggested in the the end of the nineteenth century and which has been suggested again by some organizations is an agreement which annuls the marriage. The agreement states that should the husband refuse to give his wife a valid Jewish divorce the marriage is annulled retroactively. There will have been no marriage (and therefore no need for a divorce). The greatest Poskim of the 19th and 20th centuries all agreed in the Halachic system it is impossible to have a marriage predicated on such a stipulation.
But there is one exception to this idea. The exceptional case is when the stipulation will obviate the necessity for levirate marriage- yibbum. In today’s class we will discuss in some detail the halachot of stipulations in marriage and how stipulations can be made in order to avoid a need for yibbum/chalitzah.