Supreme Court: a woman who betrayed her husband should not be denied half the value of her house

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by Ifi Reporter Category:Law Jun 24, 2021

An expanded panel of  the Supreme Court judges Thursday overturned a previous ruling in the court, stating that a woman who betrayed her husband should not be denied her entitlement to half the value of the house in which they lived. Were in the minority.
The central question in which the judges ruled is whether infidelity could be a consideration in the decision to divide property between divorced spouses. In 2018, the High Court upheld the ruling of the Great Rabbinical Court in the case, thus strengthening its decision to consider treason in the division of property. Until then, the rabbinical court is required to rule in such cases under civil law - that treason is not a relevant consideration in making a decision. One year after this decision, Supreme Court President Esther Hayut received a petition to hold another hearing on the issue, and today the panel headed by her reversed the High Court ruling in the case.
In today's ruling, Hayut wrote that "the difficulty in the ruling of the Great Rabbinical Court stems from the fact that its legal rulings do not reflect civil law, as expressed in the ruling of this court." Along with animals, in the opinion of the majority, the judges were Hanan Meltzer, Neil Handel, Uzi Vogelman, Yitzhak Amit and Dafna Barak Erez.
Hayut called the ruling of the Great Rabbinical Court "a blatant mistake, according to which sexual infidelity may constitute a basis for the negation of an intentional partnership that has been formed, and allow the sharing partner to return to the intention to share the property." However, the Supreme Court qualified her remarks and said that there are exceptional and extreme circumstances for which these rights can be denied. Thus, for example, if one of the spouses had a "double life" without the other knowing about it, the other could claim that if he had known about the infidelity he would not have decided to share the property.
Judge Stein, on the other hand, said that the previous decision of the High Court should not be interfered with. .
In addition, Stein objected to Hayut's ruling, which argued that the ability of one spouse to "regime" the other should be reduced as much as possible through agreements and conditions in marriage. According to Stein, "the problem of 'spouse' governance by one spouse worries me less than the regime of married life by setting coercive judicial norms aimed at instilling in citizens the good qualities and 'right' values ​​in managing married life." Stein wrote that judges have no authority to interfere in a relationship between spouses. "Each couple will design and manage their relationships and assets as they see fit," he wrote.
In its previous decision from 2018, the High Court reversed a ruling some 25 years ago, which ruled that in disputes over property between spouses, the rabbinical court is required to rule under civil law, which does not allow a person to be denied anything due to infidelity. Judges Mintz and Stein sat in the panel. In 2018, they ruled that the rabbinical court may take into account the betrayal, and that its ruling does not justify intervention by the High Court.
The ruling dealt with a couple who married in 1982, and had three grown children. In 2013, the husband sued for divorce from his wife through the rabbinical court, claiming that his wife had betrayed him for several months. The woman agreed to divorce, but a dispute arose between the two over the division of property, which focused on the house where the family lived. The husband claimed that his wife was not entitled to half of the value of the house, registered in his name, as it was built on a plot of land he had inherited before the two were married.
The Maternal Relations Act of 1974 provides that in the event of a divorce, each spouse is entitled to half the value of all the spouses' assets, but an asset that was owned by one of the spouses before the marriage and remains registered in his name will not be considered joint property. However, the High Court extended the law and ruled in a series of judgments that such an asset could be divided equally if "specific sharing intent" was proved. These were criteria developed by the family courts to determine whether the spouses intended to share the property owned by one of them. Before the marriage and registered in his name.According to the case law, in cases of first and prolonged marriage, and especially in the case of the house where the couple lived at the time of their marriage, the tendency is for equal distribution.
Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kadri of the Rackman Center at Bar Ilan University, who represented the woman, said in response that "the significance of the ruling is enormous. The residence, and the question of who brought it to the use of the family unit. "
"It is therefore clear that this property right cannot be denied, even in the case where the spouses divorced due to infidelity. The Supreme Court recognized that the spouse's right to half the apartment was formed throughout the spouses' life together and cannot be revoked retroactively. In a significant way, the rights of the weaker spouse, who usually comes to a marriage without an apartment, and on which he relies throughout the long years of marriage. "

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