The Harm of Long-Term Get Refusal
Yesterday I found myself doing a deep dive into the laws of Jewish divorce after seeing online posts about a woman named Adeena who has reportedly been trying to obtain a get, a Jewish bill of divorce, from her ex-husband for more than five years.
As a Jewish man with rabbinic ordination who initiated divorce myself in 2016, I believe I have a somewhat unusual vantage point on this issue. I understand how emotionally and financially destructive divorce can become, especially when children are involved. I understand why some couples try to synchronize the civil and religious divorce processes. And I understand that family courts, custody disputes, and post-marital conflict can leave both men and women feeling angry, wounded, and defensive.
At the same time, I am also aware that there are men who exploit the structure of the get system for leverage, revenge, control, or emotional punishment.
While I strongly support fathers navigating difficult divorces and custody battles, I cannot understand the justification for withholding a get for more than five years after a marriage has already functionally ended. In the early stages of divorce emotions run high, legal disputes are unresolved, and both sides are still adjusting to a collapsing family structure. But after half a decade, the continued refusal to release a former spouse from the marriage begins to look less like legal caution and more like coercion.
And that is the uncomfortable reality at the center of this issue.
Long-term get refusal is not merely a religious technicality or an unfortunate procedural dispute. In many cases it becomes a mechanism of prolonged control, trapping a woman in a marriage that has already ended in every practical sense. Whatever the motivation, whether revenge, emotional leverage, resentment, insecurity, or punishment, the result is the same: another person’s life remains frozen indefinitely.
That is abusive. And the fact that these cases continue to emerge generation after generation suggests that this is not merely a problem of individual behavior, but a structural problem that deserves far more serious communal attention and reform.
At the same time, many people discussing these cases online do not fully understand the origins or legal structure of Jewish marriage and divorce. To understand why this problem persists, it is necessary to understand how the get functions within halacha itself.
For most couples, the end of a marriage is painful but legally straightforward. Modern legal systems are designed to allow two people to separate, divide obligations, and move forward with their lives.
In Jewish law, however, divorce depends on a specific legal act: the giving and receiving of a get. This reflects the structure of Jewish marriage, where betrothal (kiddushin) is initiated through a formal legal act by the husband that establishes the marital status under halachic law.
And within that structure lies one of the most painful and persistently unresolved problems in contemporary Jewish life.
Every few years, another high-profile case emerges in which a husband refuses to grant a get, effectively chaining a woman to a dead marriage for years. Sometimes the refusal is used to extract money, custody concessions, or emotional control. Sometimes it becomes an act of punishment or abuse long after the relationship itself has collapsed.
These are not merely technical legal disputes. They are situations that many rabbis, scholars, and advocates have described as forms of coercion and ongoing domestic abuse carried out through legal structure.
The fact that such cases continue to recur, despite communal outrage, despite rabbinic concern, and despite decades of attempted solutions, raises difficult questions about whether existing mechanisms are sufficient and whether deeper reform within halacha is still needed.
Jewish divorce law is among the most technically structured and conceptually distinctive areas of halacha. At its center lies a single legal mechanism: the get, a written document of separation described in the Torah and elaborated in extensive detail in rabbinic literature, particularly in the Talmud.
Unlike modern civil legal systems, where marriage is typically understood as a bilateral contract that can be dissolved through mutual consent or judicial decree, halacha defines divorce as a status change effected through a specific legal act. The dissolution of marriage is not achieved by declaration or mutual agreement alone, but through the formal delivery of a get from husband to wife under a tightly regulated framework of intent, witnesses, writing, and delivery. These procedural requirements are developed and refined in classical sources such as the Mishnah and expanded in later Talmudic analysis.
This structure is not a historical accident or later modification of the system. It is part of the foundational architecture of Jewish marital law: marriage and divorce are not symmetrical contractual states, but legally defined statuses created and dissolved through specified acts.
Some elements of this structure can appear archaic when viewed from a modern perspective, a tension that Jewish law has long navigated as it bridges ancient legal frameworks with contemporary realities. It is unclear whether earlier rabbinic authorities envisioned a situation in which a get could be withheld as a form of leverage or control in prolonged divorce conflicts, or whether this represents an unintended consequence of a system developed in a very different social and legal context.
Yet precisely because of this structural clarity, the system generates a recurring and deeply consequential practical tension.
In some cases, a spouse may refuse to grant or accept a get despite the clear breakdown of the relationship. The result is not merely administrative delay, but a prolonged state of marital limbo in which one party, most often the woman, remains legally bound to a marriage that has effectively ended in every other sense.
These cases are not abstract. Over the years, many women have found themselves unable to remarry or move forward in life because of prolonged get refusal, sometimes lasting years or even decades. In some instances, this refusal has been described by rabbinic and communal leaders as being used coercively, turning the get into a form of leverage in post-marital disputes. The phenomenon commonly referred to as the agunah problem reflects precisely this vulnerability within the structure of halacha.
Rabbinic tradition has long recognized the seriousness of these situations. It is important to emphasize that halacha does not treat them lightly or ignore them. Rather, it develops a range of internal legal responses intended to address them while preserving the integrity of the system.
Internal mechanisms within halacha
Halachic sources develop several categories of response to cases of get refusal or obstruction.
One category is coercion in defined halachic circumstances. In certain cases where divorce is mandated by law, rabbinic courts may apply pressure to compel compliance. This can include financial sanctions, communal pressure, or procedural enforcement. A well-known Talmudic formulation describes coercion until the individual states willingness to proceed, reflecting the principle that compelled compliance may still produce a valid legal act when applied within proper categories.
A second category consists of preventive legal tools. These aim not to resolve refusal after it occurs, but to reduce its likelihood in advance. In contemporary practice, prenuptial agreements have become an important mechanism in this regard. Organizations such as the Beth Din of America have developed agreements that impose financial obligations in the event of refusal, thereby creating strong incentives for compliance while remaining within halachic boundaries.
A third category consists of rare and exceptional doctrines that challenge or bypass the need for a standard get under specific conditions. These include theories of mistaken marriage (kiddushei ta’ut) and annulment-based approaches (hafka’at kiddushin), in which the validity of the original marriage is retroactively undermined under narrowly defined circumstances. However, these mechanisms are limited, contested, and not broadly applied in mainstream halachic practice.
Across all of these categories, one structural feature remains constant: the get itself remains the exclusive mechanism of divorce.
Structural asymmetry and lived consequence
This structure creates a form of legal asymmetry that becomes most visible in cases of refusal. Because the get is required as a formal act initiated through one party, the system does not contain a fully symmetrical or independently initiated mechanism of divorce.
From within halacha, this is not considered a defect but a definitional feature: divorce is structured as a specific legal act rather than a mutual dissolution of contract. As a result, even when both parties agree that the marriage has effectively ended, the legal system still requires completion of the formal act of giving and receiving a get.
In most cases, this structure functions without difficulty. But in cases of refusal, disappearance, or strategic withholding, it can produce prolonged dependency. It is in these cases that the system’s structure intersects most sharply with lived human consequence.
The problem is not simply theoretical imbalance. In practice, the asymmetry can create conditions in which abuse becomes structurally possible. Even if the overwhelming majority of Jewish divorces proceed without incident, the recurring existence of get-refusal cases means the system periodically enables one spouse to exercise profound control over another person’s future. Critics argue that any legal structure capable of repeatedly producing such outcomes demands more than sympathy or procedural mitigation; it demands meaningful reform.
Rabbinic tradition has consistently treated these cases as serious and morally significant. At the same time, it has also been careful not to dissolve the underlying legal architecture in response to them. The tension between structural continuity and individual suffering is therefore not incidental. It is embedded in the system’s design.
Modern responses and evolving tools
In recent decades, this tension has generated renewed attention and institutional innovation. One of the most significant developments has been the expansion of prenuptial agreements designed to prevent get refusal before it occurs. These agreements function by creating enforceable financial obligations that activate in the event of non-compliance, reducing the practical ability to withhold a get without consequence.
Such agreements represent meaningful and often effective harm-reduction measures, but they do not eliminate the underlying structural vulnerability that allows get refusal to occur in the first place.
While these reforms have helped many women avoid becoming agunot, advocates note that the continued emergence of severe cases demonstrates that the broader issue has not been fully solved. The question increasingly raised in modern discourse is not only how to manage abuse within the current framework, but whether a system that repeatedly permits such abuse requires more substantial legal innovation.
Similarly, rabbinic courts continue to refine procedural enforcement tools, and communal norms increasingly discourage refusal behavior. These developments have had measurable impact in reducing certain types of cases, particularly in communities where such agreements are widely adopted.
Still, none of these mechanisms fundamentally changes the underlying architecture: divorce remains dependent on the execution of a specific legal act.
The underlying question
The persistence of this structure raises a broader conceptual question about legal design within halacha. Jewish law has historically developed through interpretation, procedural refinement, and rabbinic enactment rather than through replacement of foundational categories. Its continuity is one of its defining features.
At the same time, that continuity means that certain structural tensions remain unresolved in fully comprehensive terms. The system has developed tools to mitigate, prevent, and in rare cases override problematic outcomes, but it has not replaced the core mechanism that produces them.
The question, therefore, is not whether halacha recognizes the issue. It clearly does. The question is how far internal development within existing categories can continue to address it.
Jewish legal history suggests that change, where it occurs, tends to be incremental, layered, and constrained by precedent. Whether the current set of tools represents the practical endpoint of that process, or whether further halachic innovation will emerge over time, remains open within the tradition itself.
The get remains one of the oldest and most enduring institutions in Jewish law. Its procedural precision reflects the seriousness with which rabbinic tradition approached marriage, lineage, and Jewish continuity.
But the persistence of long-term get refusal cases also reveals the human cost that legal continuity can sometimes impose.
For decades, rabbinic authorities and Jewish communities have attempted to reduce the problem through coercive measures, communal pressure, prenuptial agreements, and limited doctrinal innovations. These efforts have helped many women and represent serious attempts to respond responsibly within halacha’s framework.
Yet the recurrence of cases in which women remain trapped in unwanted marriages for years continues to provoke deep moral and legal criticism. Each new case renews the same uncomfortable reality: a system designed to preserve legal integrity can also create opportunities for exploitation, control, and abuse when one party refuses to participate.
That tension can no longer be dismissed as merely an unfortunate side effect. For many observers, including committed participants within halachic life itself, it has become a persistent structural challenge demanding stronger solutions than communal outrage alone.
What is clear is that the issue is not disappearing. As long as women continue to be effectively chained to dead marriages for years at a time, pressure for deeper reform within Jewish divorce law will continue to grow.
Because even one woman trapped for years in a marriage that no longer exists in any meaningful sense is one too many.
Many Jewish women have been deeply traumatized by experiences like these, and many others have become alienated from Judaism and Jewish tradition after witnessing stories of prolonged get refusal and the suffering it can cause.
It is time for rabbinic leadership across the Jewish world, together with the strongest halachic minds of this generation, to seriously confront this issue and work toward lasting solutions. Perhaps resolving a problem of this magnitude will require a greater degree of legal creativity than mechanisms such as the eruv, eruv tavshilin, or heter iska once demanded. But perhaps that is fitting, because this problem has also become more severe, more visible, and more morally urgent than many of the challenges previous generations succeeded in addressing.
