Should You Get a Pre-Nup Alongside Your Ketubah?

Yishar kohech.  Every Jewish couple that marries should do this.  When my wife and I got married in 1980, we had one, because we thought it important to do what we could to minimize the possibility that she would become an aguna.  There apparently are halachic issues regarding use of financial incentives to induce the recalcitrant husband to give his wife a get, but reliable folks (and not just liberals) in the Orthodox world say that it is possible to structure a prenup to avoid those problems.

Basil Herring - of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) - came out in favor of prenups. The RCA strongly encourages its member rabbis to strongly encourage their congregants to incorporate the prenups into their wedding preparations. My rabbi did, and we signed two - one giving a dollar amount to the ketuba and authorizing its enforcement by secular courts, if necessary - and another stipulating a financial penalty for withholding a get.

Romantic? Hardly. But like you said, we're already signing contracts, so what's another?

And in an interesting twist, my rabbi said we could use the prenup forms to give out more 'kibudim' at the wedding. Halachically, ketubot and the wedding ceremony itself have to be witnessed by mitzvah-observant, adult men. The prenups can be witnessed by women or non-frum relatives (gasp!), providing a clever way to honor Aunt Sadie or Uncle Chris at an otherwise Orthodox function. 

This is just another example of the RCA and the rabbinic leadership structure of American centrist orthodoxy in general being several decades ahead of their Israeli counterparts. But at least they're thinking about it over in Israel. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.

Never, Never, sign an Orthodox Pre-nup. Despite all promises the RCA beth din expects to settle the financials. The woman will always lose or gain less money than in secular court. The beth din openly does not accept no fault and has a reputation for believing the man when he claims that there was adultery. Also, the man is more likely to have Rabbinic support and the Beth Din will accept it.

The pre-nup has never been taken to secular court and all law review articles and moot courts have show that it will not hold up in court- just like the shaariah divorce does not hold. 

Any gains have come from the NY (NJ, Quebec et al) get law not from the rabbis. 

Signing the document me giving your future to a bunch of misogynist Modern Orthodox rabbis. if you want to get personal - most of them have records for purjury. ANd now several members of the Beth Din has come out against secular law. They are also supporting the Haredi rabbis to invalidate conversions.

It has no legal status. Beware.

"Danger" has committed what may be libel, and what is certainly misspelling, in his allegation of "purjury".  He's also mistaken about how a prenup operates.  Our prenup states that, if we should (hv"h) become civilly divorced without my giving my wife a get, I will be obligated to pay her a specified amount (with a specified inflation adjustment factor) by way of support each day, until I give her a get.  The agreement is designed precisely so that it will be enforceable in the _civil_ courts -- they, unlike the rabbinical bet din, have actual power to impose sanctions if I should I fail to pay.

Tarfon's right, actually. You want to talk about batei din that don't respect women, you'd be looking at the more haredi and right-wing ones. RCA is as good as you're going to get, equality-wise.

 And the RCA came out vocally against the revocation of conversions, Danger, or does that fact not fit in with your predetermined conclusion?

Wouldn't getting a Pre-Nup alongside your Ketubah be like saying "this marriage will probably end in divorce, so we should prepare now?" A little Hollywood wouldn't you say? That kind of sounds rather depressing and anti Jewish to me.  It puts the possibility of divorce in the back of one's head throughout the marriage, which doesn't seem very romantic.

Your ketuba is already such a document. Read it -- it's not a flowers-and-sunrises expression of the rapture of love. It's a financial settlement, whose amount becomes payable in a divorce. Recognizing the divorce rate isn't Hollywood; it's reality. And it makes people act in a really ugly way. A woman who has absolute faith that she and her fiance will never get divorced, or that, if they do, he will never withhold a get, is a naive fool.

You obviously have not done the background or perhaps even read the RCA prenup. This is a very one sided agreement slanted towards the wife.

What it says in essence is that if there is a breakdown in the marriage, both parties will show up for a get, the man will give it and the woman will receive it.

If the man refuses to give the get, there is a large monetary cost to him. If the woman refuses to accept it, she just doesn't get the large payment, she doesn't have any out of pocket negative consequences.

As far as deciding the split, support, etc. the prenup gives the option to go to the Beit Din, with several options as to how they will decide, including the secular guidelines, but the prenup does not require that the monetary issue be presented to the Beit Din.

That being the case, the document is extremely one sided, and I would advise any man not to sign it. If a woman's fiance agrees to sign it, and she doesn't, I suspect her of being a fool.

Any halachically permissable document that can help towards preventing a woman from becoming an agunah should be embraced. The pre-nup might not be perfect, but if nothing else it is an acknowledgement from (some) rabbinic authorities that problem of agunot is real and needs to be addressed.

If you look at the actual document in question, it provides the couple the option of selecting the amount of jurisdiction the beit din will have - there is the option to select Get only, or to select Get and finances/custody. I was discouraged from signing such a document by my right-wing rabbi. It ended up taking me years, and much financial and emotional expense, to get a Get. I advocate any halachic method that can help prevent other women from going through such an experience.