עורך דין ג'רמי שטרן Jeremy Stern Attorney at law

19/03/2024

The battery of psychodiagnostics tests enable a trained psychologist to pe*****te the mind and soul of the person being tested and reveal a treasure trove of information about that person. The tests are thorough and can be taxing and usually require at least two sessions over two days. Beyond these tools, the psychologist will note other aspects of the meeting with the patient: did they arrive on time? How were they dressed and was it seasonally-appropriate? Is their tone and volume of voice appropriate?

Once the psychologist has the data from the tests, they will sit and process the scores and come up with a personality and intelligence profile based upon the results. In my experience, psychodiagnostic report are extremely accurate; I have had clients tell me that they were shocked how someone could understand them with minimal personal interaction. In other cases, the psychologist unearthed buried secrets that the person being test had forgotten or not known about.

05/03/2024

It has been quite a while since I last wrote for Facebook. In my last post, I ended with a teaser
for my next post, saying I would discuss that tests that are commonly used and the gender
issues in psychological evaluations. Since I practice in Israel, I’ll stick to the kinds of tests
commonly used here.

A report will include psychodiagnostic evaluations of both parents and of the children,
meetings with the parents separately and possibly together, and meetings with each parent
and child to see how they interact. The psychologist might also make a home visit to see the
children and parents in a natural setting. A psychodiagnostic evaluation is a report based
upon a series of interviews (structured, clinical interviews) and tests, including TAT, MMPI-
2, Rorschach (still used in Israel), Wais-III, and HTP.

08/09/2022

עו״ד גרמי שטרן
In my last post I promised a discussion of the dos and don’ts of using psychological evaluations. As I wrote psychological evaluations are very useful and possibly indispensable in custody cases. It’s important to know how they work so that they are used properly and not abused.
The first thing – it might seem obvious, but it isn’t – is the identity and training of the psychologist doing the testing. Testing should be done by a clinical psychologist (in some case a psychologist with other specialties might be able to administer the test but those are rare). A clinical psychologist has undergone training in administering, scoring, and evaluating psychological testing. A regular psychologist might be intuitive, might be a good therapist, might have a good understanding of human nature, but won’t know how to properly administer score, and evaluate the tests.
Second thing to look for is clinical psychologist who has many years of training. While the tests are objective, the proper interpretation of the results depends a lot on the experience of the evaluator. For example, clinical psychologists fresh out of school and having just received their license might have limited experience with certain cultural groups and misunderstand the result of the testing. An example from my law practice was a case where an evaluation was done on children from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish background, the evaluator understood that the children’s limited vocabulary was not a sign of low intelligence issue or any kind of neglect on the parents’ part, but due to the fact that these children simply grew up in a different cultural framework then children not raised in a religious background. A clinical psychologist once discussed this issue with me, in particular regarding communities that live “off the grid” – specifically, the Beduin Arab community in Israel. She said that she had to administer the test to an individual with zero literacy, which is a challenge on its own as much of the testing requires reading and writing. But she had enough training to know how to handle such a case and, in fact, the person being evaluated turned out to be a genius (as indicated by the scoring).
In another instance the psychologist noted that the children used certain words to describe sexual behavior. In an non-Orthodox family, these words would not have been remarkable, (due to exposure of internet and social media), but in this context it was surprising due to these children’s sheltered background. These types of observations can easily be lost on a younger and less experienced psychologist. By contract, an experienced psychologist, even if they haven’t had experience with the community from which the person undergoing the evaluation comes from, will know to be on the lookout for cultural issues. The psychologist will know consult others who have such experience.
Another quality to look for is an evaluator without a political agenda. A psychologist who claims to be a victims’ rights advocate might not be as objective in evaluating someone who claims to be a victim, as opposed to a psychologist who doesn’t have political or social agendas.
Beyond the identity of the evaluator themselves and their qualifications, an important issue to be aware of is what tests are actually being administered. In a complex custody case I was involved with, we received the final report, and the psychologist wrote which tests he administered to the parents of the children.For some reason the mother was not given some of the tests. In my view the report was imbalanced and didn’t give any objective indication of the mother, which took away from the report’s validity.
It should be noted that psychological reports do not include the raw data and scoring, but one can ask the evaluator to send the scoring and tests to another psychologist so that they can evaluate the reports. This is often leads to discovering instances where the evaluator’s report did not jive with the actually results from the testing.
Reports should be read critically, paying attention what is said and what is not said. Often, a careful reading will uncover defects in the tests or results. So the psychologist who didn’t use the usual battery of tests – that is an easy one to spot. But that’s a simple error. How do you figure out where there are more nuanced? One thing to look for is a psychologist writing that a test was indeed administered, yet the report does not elaborate or describe anything about the results of that test. I saw a report where, regarding the father, the psychologist elaborated on the MMPI-II results, whereas for the mother, all he wrote was that the test results were valid. Presumably that the means the psychologist was glossing over something unflattering in the results or something he didn’t want to be revealed. In fact, when I sent the testing scores to another psychologist, they found serious personality issues in the mother. I once examined a report where the psychologist wrote the IQ scores for one parent but not for the other – even though both parents were given the test.

When it comes to custody evaluations, the question is what do the reports tell us? I once had a long conversation with a clinical psychologist who felt that the testing in custody cases wasn’t necessary, since anyways we need to get the parents to come to an agreement.
From my experience he was off the mark. If both parents were healthy, by definition, they would come to an agreement with need for the dispute to be adjudicated. The fact they cannot make a custody plan (and often mutual allegations of psychological issues) means we need some objectivity and that can only be achieved through the evaluations. This is especially the case when there are accusations of sexual abuse. For example, if one parent accuses the other of sexual abuse but the results show the accused has no sexual pathology, but the accuser has anxiety issues the psych reports can help the fact finder decide for the children. Alternatively, if the accusing parent’s testing comes out all clean and the other parent shows signs of a pathology the judge has a way out of the “he said she said” merry-go-round. Especially In high conflict cases, the evaluations give us some level of objectivity and get us out of the never-ending mudslinging accusations typical in such cases.
I’d like to draw a distinction between two types of high conflict cases. In some cases, one parent creates a high conflict situation for some kind of personal gain – usually financial. In those cases, the threat of sending the parties to evaluations can get that party to calm down and settle the case. In some cases, however, the parent believes their own delusion, and of course no report from a psychologist will dissuade them, but at least the fact finder will have the relevant information to make decisions. Much like depositions in regular civil cases, psychodiagnostics evaluations can help parties to come to an agreement and if not, at least clear the path for the court to make the right decision.
In my next post I will get into some of the specifics of the testing that is done and issues that come up with the testing and the differences between men and women.

עורך דין ג'רמי שטרן, עורך דין. תחומי עיסוק: ענייני משפחה ומשפט בין לאומי פרטי.
Jeremy Stern, Attorney at Law. Practice areas: Family and International Private Law

14/06/2022

The verdict has been in for a few weeks, and it looks like the jury on the Depp v Heard trial came to a compromise. While the jury did feel that Heard unfairly defamed Johnny Depp and caused him significant losses, they also felt that Depp’s lawyer was not 100 percent kosher and Depp had to pay the price. Watching the interviews of the attorneys on both sides and the various legal pundits who covered the trail - before, during and after - it seems that the expert witness testimony that Depp brought had a significant impact on the outcome of the trial. The diagnosis given by Depp’s expert witness was that Amber Heard has borderline and histrionic personality disorders and did not suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder due to Depp’s abuse, but simply pretended that she did.
Interestingly, the expert witness, Dr. Shannon Curry, was brought solely to answer the question whether Amber Heard had suffered PTSD from Depp’s behavior but in reality, the testimony had a much larger and powerful impact on the case.
There could be no doubt that the jurors viewed Heard’s testimony and numerous allegations and stories of abuse through the perspective of that diagnosis’s. Namely that these are exaggerations and machinations of a disturbed person and not what actually happened. If we had not had the expert testimony, the juror would have had to form its opinions of the varicosity of Heard’s claims based solely on the impressions of her testimony and the factual contradictions of the testimony of other witnesses.
However once there was a diagnosis of histrionic personality disorder on the table, the jury had a solid basis to believe that Heard was literally making up “stories”. After all inherent in histrionic personality disorder is the tendency to exaggerate and sometimes invent events that have no little or no bearing on reality.
In most court cases the fact finder (jurors or judge) does not have this privilege. Parties are not forced to undergo phycological evaluations and therefore evaluations are not used as a tool to get to the truth.
This is a huge loss. In most instances where I’ve seen deception or dishonesty, especially in the context of family law, the root of the deceptive or dishonest behavior was in a personality disorder. If courts were to allow the introduction of psychological assessments, the fact finder would have a lot easier time understanding the parties in front of them and would be less likely to be deceived by a convincing or charming disordered person.
While I don’t see psychological testing becoming the norm any time soon in conventional lawsuits, they are currently used in custody cases and in my view should be used to a greater extent. Generally, in contentious custody battles in the US, the court orders a forensic psychologal report to be submitted by a neutral psychologist. These reports - similar to the ones submitted by Depp’s attorney - rely on psychological tests and clinical interviews and includes a personality profile of both parents. In many instances the children themselves undergo a clinical examination and the report includes those results as well.
In Israel, custody is largely determined on a written recommendation of a government-appointed social worker in the form of a “Taskir” (report). The report is a summary of the facts with some recommendations and impressions, and often includes standard language about the parents. that appears to be copied from report to report. The problem is that social workers do not have the necessary training or ability to create a psychological profile of the parents or the children. They are obviously going to have a hard time determining if one or the other parent has a personality disorder or even a personality profile and they are absolutely not qualified to make that determination.
Without that training, an evaluator can be fooled especially if they present themselves as being a victim. Let’s imagine a social worker meets a mother with the personality characteristics of Amber Heard. The mother makes all kinds of allegations against the father of abuse and r**e and the social worker might easily find her performance convincing. A psychologist, however, is trained to dig beneath the surface and, if they don’t catch the personality disorder in the clinical interview, the disorder will show up in the testing. This issue comes up in many of my cases where there are allegations of sexual abuse, where it is clear that the party presenting the abuse (usually the mother but not always) has a personality disorder. To the non-trained observer, the story might sound very convincing but when the mother is evaluated by a clinical psychologist it is clear the real issue is in the parent alleging the abuse and not the other. In other instances, the untrained eye will miss the abusive behavior of a parent whereas a psychologist will uncover abusive traits in the assessment.
For all the above reason, I believe that, in every case where abuse allegations are made, both parents should be sent for a full assessment. Unfortunately, the court doesn’t follow this model and cases drag on for years because there is no clear way for the fact finder to uncover the truth.
Of course, a psychologist cannot say if something happened or not, but they can say if this parent appears to be an abuse or making up allegations. this is the closest we can ever get to a fact-finding mechanism in abuse allegations
In my next post I will go over the dos and don’ts of psychological testing.

עורך דין ג'רמי שטרן, עורך דין. תחומי עיסוק: ענייני משפחה ומשפט בין לאומי פרטי.
Jeremy Stern, Attorney at Law. Practice areas: Family and International Private Law

01/06/2022

עו״ד גרמי שטרן
In 2017, the movement was a watershed for the public discourse on abuse, with the mantra “believe all women.”

Now, in 2022, the pendulum has swung the other way and people have started to call into question the entire notion of a person who claims is a victim to be believed.
For anyone who has been living under a rock for the past 6 week the impetus for this change is the Depp v Heard trial. For those rock dwellers, here’s the story:

Amber Heard publicly accused Jonny Depp of abuse and even went to the court for a protection order in 2016. Two years later, she became the ambassador for domestic abuse for the ACLU and posted an op-ed for the Washington post introducing herself in the capacity of a domestic victim, and alleging she herself had experienced abuse.

Jonny Depp sued Heard in a court in Virginia for defamation for 50 million dollars claiming his career was wiped out as a result of her allegations of abuse. Amber Heard countersued claiming Depp’s lawyer defamed her in an article and called her abuse claims a hoax.

The crux of the trial (which lasted 6 weeks) focused on one essential question: who is the abuser? Did Depp abuse Heard through various acts of physical violence, emotional control, and possible sexual violence? Or was Depp the victim of a manipulative, lying, disordered spouse.
Because of the public nature of a trial livestreamed on numerous YouTube channels, the parties’ dirty laundry has been hung out for all to see – and the public can make their own decision about who the real abuser was. Text messages, testimony of friend’s, video recordings, audio recording – all these forms of evidence played out in front of the jury and, more importantly, in front of the world.

Simply by following the mainstream media, one would not get a clear picture of the kind of evidence that was brought forward in the case, a point made by numerous Youtubers and Twitter users, who have compulsively followed the case.

As an attorney who deals largely with domestic relations this case is particularly interesting as it raises an issue I have on an almost daily basis in my law practice: who is to be believed?

When a client comes in accuses their partner of being abusive, how am I to know if that is an accurate depiction of facts or, perhaps, they are actually the abuser and are projecting their actions on to their partner (as abusers commonly do)?

Being an attorney who wants to find out the facts is a difficult job, since the information is only coming from one side and I am not going to get the full picture.

To complicate matters even more, even if I do hear both sides pf the story, it’s still difficult to get to the bottom of things: true abusers they are notoriously good at distorting facts, gaining sympathy and making the other side come out as the abuser. What I can say is that there are a few rules of thumb that are useful for sorting through the morass of mutual claims of abuse.
First of all, does it make sense on its own? Is the person telling me the story in a zig zag fashion, or do they have a consistent narrative? To be sure, sometimes people have been so victimized they can’t express what happened to them, but at the end of day, if they can give facts and narratives that is consistent that gives credibility and the inability to provide a clear, coherent, and consistent narrative raises serious questions about whether the client is accurately telling the story.

Number two, do the allegations of abuse make sense objectively outside the context of their case? A very common claim that comes up consistently in divorce cases, is the claim that the father sexually abused the children. Statistics and common experience show that the percentage of people with pedophilic tendencies is very low, and that number gets lower when it comes to their own children.

An example from my practice: a mother claims a father abused their 1.5 years old child. Even among the subset of pedophiles who are capable of sexual abusing their own child, the percentage of those that would abuse a baby or toddler are extremely rare. So, while I’m not going to say it didn’t happen, it will have to be investigated thoroughly and I will be more suspicious than a more believable claim.

On the other hand, if a spouse claims that their partner is very controlling, doesn’t let them visit relatives, guilt trips them into overspending on them, or underspending on themselves ,or blaming their partner for everything, all of these are quite common and definitely deserve more presumption of believability.

Number three, does the story seem exaggerated? Maybe something did happen but does the “victim” seem to be making a mountain of a molehill? Naturally there are so many factors and variables to determine if a reaction is an overreaction, but in the end it comes down to common sense. If a husband says his wife is berating him and makes him feel worthless, I want to know is she actually berating him, or she was encouraging him to find a job instead of staying unemployed.

How do I get to the truth and figure out if a client is exaggerating or inconsistent or projecting?
The most important thing is a timeline. Someone who does not have a clear story and know when things happened often is not telling the truth or has distorted the truth.

The flip side is that abusers will not have clear answers to allegations of abuse. If when I ask, “is it true you hit your wife,” I don’t get a clear no and the client starts skirting the issue and talking about other topics rather than dealing with the specific allegations, then I know something happened and the allegation is likely true.

The timeline is also useful to check the veracity of the claims. A case I had from my law practice: my client’s ex claimed that he sexually abused 10 yr. old son. Once I had the timeline, I was able to show that she made the allegations during a time when she consistently left the kid with him alone despite her admission she knew about the abuse. In addition, she installed cameras ”to make sure: there was no abuse happening. If she had the guts to install a camera to see if abuse was happening, then surely, she had the presence of mind not to leave the child with the abuser.

Once a case comes to trial, a very useful tool to get to the bottom of things is appointing clinical psychologists to do psycho-diagnostic evaluations of the couple. It is extremely difficult to fool a clinical psychologist when testing is done properly. The MMPI-2 test specifically looks out for a tester who is trying to come off better than they are and to put on a façade.

The Depp v Heard case gave us a unique look at the use of testing, since both sides brought clinical psychologists as expert witnesses. It’s interesting to note that Depp did not go under evaluation largely because that was not an issue in the lawsuit. It would surely be interesting to see the results. The expert witness bought by Depp testified that in her professional opinion, Heard has Borderline Personality Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder.

In her testimony the psychologist was able to explain how she arrived at her conclusions, demonstrating that Heard exaggerated her claims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the testing. As the court psychologist herself admitted she’s not a fact finder and couldn’t say what happened on a given day but she can say if Heard presents events as they happened or a disported version of what happened. Heard brought a psychologist to testify that she had PTSD from the marriage to Depp. During cross examination she admitted she came to the diagnosis after two years of treatment, and only gave the diagnostic testing after forming an opinion on the matter.
I did not read the written reports of the psychologists and I did not see the scoring (under Israeli law, psychologists can’t show score to non-psychologists and I would not be surprised if the same holds for the US). From the oral testimony, the overall impression of Heard’s psychologist is that she is driven by agendas and her desire to label Heard as victim.

I prefer to send cases to clinical psychologists and I specifically look for non-political and non-dogmatic experts. If a psychologist writes on their website that they champion victim rights or that they are “pro fathers rights”, I know this is not going to be an expert who can give an unbiased report.
When it comes to psycho-diagnostic testing, the results should be replicable, meaning that if the person administering the test has experience and competence their results should not be too different from another psychologist. Once you through a political agenda into the mix, anything can happen. In Heard’s case, her expert witness admitted to not properly scoring the test sheets. When a person has an agenda, they’ll play fast and loose with the rules even if their intentions are good.
The jury is out – literally – on the question of who the abuser is, Heard or Depp. From the many divorce cases I have done, rarely is the question of abuse a zero sum game where all the blame is on one partner. So yes, a wife might be borderline and abuse her husband, but perhaps the husband is an alcoholic with unresolved trauma from his youth which contributed to the volatility of the marriage. It is precisely for that reason that I personally try to avoid using the term “abuse” and prefer to describe the behaviors and patterns of both sides.

With most Western countries recognizing unilateral no-fault divorce, there is seldom a need to apportion blame for the breakdown of the relationship, so the the question of who is the abuser comes up more often in child custody and allegations of levelled against the other parent. I am strong believer that, in such cases, a custody determination must be done by a clinical psychologist after full and complete psycho-diagnostic testing has been administered – this is the only way to get to the bottom of the high conflict cases. In my next post I will discuss the use of expert’s with more depth and nuance and hopefully by then we will have an answer of who won - if anyone won - in the Depp Heard case .

עורך דין ג'רמי שטרן, עורך דין. תחומי עיסוק: ענייני משפחה ומשפט בין לאומי פרטי.
Jeremy Stern, Attorney at Law. Practice areas: Family and International Private Law

28/06/2021

עו״ד גרמי שטרן

An important decision was recently handed down by the Family Court regarding children suing for child support.

An ultra-orthodox couple with 3 children divorced after 6 years of marriage. In their divorce agreement, the couple mutually agreed that their joint apartment would be transferred into the wife’s name, therefore fulfilling the husbands obligation to pay child support. Agreements like this are common, especially in cases where the father does not have the financial ability to pay child support on a monthly basis.

The mother sold the apartment for over a million NIS, remarried, and had 3 more children. More than 7 years after the divorce, the mother sued her ex-spouse for child support, and because of their previous agreement that she could not sue for child support, she did so in her children’s name. Over the years, the mother had alienated her children from their father, resulting in very limited visitation.

The court ruled that because she received a large enough amount of money from the apartment, and the fact that she was remarried and in a financially stable position, the children were not entitled to the child support. In addition, the judge pointed out how inappropriate it was that she tried alienating her children from their father and still ask for additional financial aid.

This ruling was an important one, because as noted above, such agreements are common, especially in the Haredi world. Many people think they can take advantage of their mutually made decision to give up their rights to child support, by suing in the child’s name, as their legal guardian.

Of course, every case depends on the circumstances. For example, what if it turned out that the mother was unable to pull out any equity from the apartment? What if the children had a good connection with the father? These factors and others could have ended with a different result.

ניתן פס״ד חשוב על ידי בית המשפט לענייני משפחה, בנוגע לתביעה עצמאית של קטינים למזונות ילדים.

מעשה שהיה כך היה: זוג חרדי עם 3 ילדים התגרשו לאחר 6 שנים של נישואים. בהסכם הגירושין הם הסכימו שהדירה המשותפת שלהם תועבר על שם האישה, ולכן הבעל לא יחויב לשלם מזונות ילדים. הסכמים כאלו מאוד נפוצים, במיוחד במקרים שלאב אין יכולת כלכלית לשלם מזונות ילדים מידי חודש בחודשו.

במשך הזמן, מכרה האם את הדירה בסך של למעלה ממיליון שקל, נישאה שוב, והביאה עוד 3 ילדים עם בן זוגה הנוכחי. למעלה משבע שנים אחרי הגירושין, הגישה האם תביעת מזונות בשם הילדים נגד בן זוגה לשעבר. התביעה הוגשה ״בשם הילדים״ לאור הסכמתם הקודמת לפיה לא תוכל לתבוע בשביל מזונות. יש לציין שבמהלך התנכרו הילדים מאב, כפי הנראה בעקבות הסתה מצד האם, וכתוצאה מכך הסדרי שהות היו מאוד מוגבלים.

בית משפט קבע שהאם קיבלה נכס שווה ערך משמעותי והיא נישאה שוב ומצבה הכלכלי הוא יציב, ולכן תביעת הילדים למזונותיהם נדחתה. הילדים לא קופחו בהסכם הגירושין ואין סיבה לחייב את האב בתשלום מעבר למה ששולם מראש ע״י העברת הדירה על שם האם. בנוסף, השופט ציין שניכור הילדים מהאב ע״י האם אינו מוסרי ובוודאי שאין לחייב את האב במזונות עבורם.

הסכמים שפוטרים את האב מתשלום מזונות ע״י העברת דירה משותפת ע״יש האם הינם נפוצים, במיוחד בציבור החרדי, ולכן פס״ד זה הוא חשוב ומהווה תקדים לניסוח הסכמים כאלה בעתיד.

למותר לציין שכל מקרה של הגשת תביעה בשם הילדים יש לבחון לגופו. לדוגמא, מה יפסוק ביה״מ אם התברר שהאם לא קיבלה תמורה מהדירה - למשל, אם שוק הנדלן ירד? מה תהיה הפסיקה במקרה שהילדים הם בקשר טוב עם האב? נסיבות אלה עשויות להוביל לתוצאה אחרת.

06/06/2021

Are Get Laws a Viable Halachic Solution? If Not, Then What is?

In our previous posts we discussed the issue of get refusal from numerous perspectives and also analyzed several of the proposals put forth to resolve the matter on a communal level.

One possible solution that has been tried in a number of countries is enacting laws that give the secular Court the ability to either fine or incarcerate spouses who refuse to give a get. In the United States, where the Establishment Clause disfavors getting the state involved in the business of religion, Get Laws have largely been suspect, both halachically (a Dayan who is a law professor at Yeshiva University opined that no Gittin should be done in NY state after the Get Law was passed) and legally. After all, a husband could write an invalid get, give it to his wife, and claim that he is not making her an Agunah. Do we really expect a secular Court to get into the question of whether the get as kosher or not? A case from 2017 (Masri v Masri 2017 NY Slip Op 27007 ) cast doubt about practicality of the Get Law in NY state and it appears that the Get Law is a dead letter in the United States.

On the other side of the pond, Agunah activists have pushed through legislation as a possible solution. Media outlets this March reported (https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/get-refusal-clarified-as-a-criminal-offence/) that the UK had amended its domestic violence statutes to consider Get refusal a form of abusive control, thus enabling the Court to put Get refusers in jail. Since the UK does not have a constitution that limits the government’s power to regulate religious behavior, the issues that came up in the United States are not a concern.

Perhaps the legal issues are not much of a concern, but the halachic issues remain, nonetheless. A recent letter from Rabbi Landesman of Airmont, to the heads of the Kedassiah and Federation Batei Din of London addresses this issue.

The letter argues that a Get can only be compelled when a competent Beth Din hears the parties claims and rules that the plaintiff brought enough evidence to convince the Beth Din that there are grounds for a divorce. Once a competent Bet Din has heard the claims and ruled that a divorce can be compelled, then a secular Court can be used to carry out the ruling of the Beth Din.

But what happens where the couple comes to the Beth Din and before a ruling is issued, the husband immediately consents to give the Get? His giving consent might be because he knows that there is a Get Law on the books and his refusing to give a Get would possibly result in his being sent to jail.

On this point, Rabbi Landesman argues that the Get is valid – we are not expected to read minds and the very existence of a Get Law is not a form of coercion (note that, as mentioned before, a Dayan from Yeshiva University did not agree with this contention).

However, if the wife or her lawyer mentioned (or even hinted) that not giving a Get can result in the husband’s going to jail, this will create a problem of a forced, and therefore invalid, Get.

Rabbi Landesman proposes, instead, that more use be made of social media to pressure husband’s into giving a Get. In his opinion, not only is pressure via social media the most effective means of achieving a resolution, but it is halachically permissible “without any question”.

It should be noted that Rabbi Landesman’s letter deals with a number of other fundamental issues that are beyond the scope of a Facebook post (there is a lengthy discussion of the grounds for divorce based upon Rabeinu Yerucham). You can read the letter in its entirety here: https://docdro.id/QLeWzfC.

Rabbi Landesman proposed social pressure as the ultimate solution to issues of Get refusal. But there is a more fundamental solution that prevents the problem from arising on a communal level, rather than attempting to resolve each situation on a case-by-case basis. In our next post, we’ll discuss prenuptial agreements in light of some of Rabbi Landesman’s concerns.