R M. Klein: Get invalid by use of Court

 Mishna Halachos(14:60): [Translation copyrighted by Daniel Eidensohn] The secular procedure is that when a woman wants to get custody of the children from her husband who is also their father – she will go the secular authorities and claim that he hit her and others such charges and that she escaped with the children and she is now requesting an “order of protection.” The Rabbis who haven’t been properly mentored by great Torah scholars and are not sufficiently learned in Torah claim that this is not the prohibitions of mesira and going to secular courts. In fact not only is this actual mesira but it is kidnapping of the children with the power of the secular judges and it is literally in the category of actual murder. (Look at Maharam Mirzburk printed at the end of Mahari Veil page 173....) Anyone who files a complaint against a Jew to a non‑Jew needs to repent as one who is a murderer. This woman who filed a complaint against her husband and they imprisoned him or other such punishment – it is not an Order of Protection but rather kidnapping the children and actual murder. Thus if either the husband or wife uses this approach they are a murderer and one needs to be very careful of this.

Besides the fact that when a woman goes to the secular courts and intimidates the husband with an Order of Protection or other techniques, it is subsequently prohibited for the husband to give her a get because it is an invalid get which has been coerced by the secular courts. One of my acquaintances came and asked regarding his wife who had obtained an Order of Protection and as a result he had been imprisoned overnight until his lawyer obtained his release. He told me that he was afraid this would happen again and again because she would make up lies about him and torment him all his life. He had decided that he had no choice but to give her a get. The beis din was now prepared to write it. I told him that a get given under these circumstances was invalid by the Torah and it was prohibited to give her a get until she removed all of her charges from the secular court and he had received a letter from her that she would no longer bring him to secular court again. This is elementary and clearly the halacha according to the Torah. It is clear that it doesn’t matter whether the husband is actually sent to jail or that she files a complaint in secular court and they don’t actually jail him.

I told him that he should listen to my advice and that both he and his wife should come and I would listen to both sides and I would make suggestion as to which rabbis to go to who might be able to make peace. Why do they say that rabbis are just for the bad to give a get but not for the positive. In fact there are wise rabbis who can make improvement and to discuss with both sides and to explain to them they are just destroying themselves and their children. That they have to worry in addition to problem in shidduchim for this family because of the fear of future divorces and many other things. In short I gave the advice to at least try counseling....