In Sieger v Sieger, 2005 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1808 (Sup. Ct. Kings Co., June 29, 2005) , an opinion which has just become available, an interesting aspect of New York divorce law is at issue. New York's Domestic Relations Law (DRL Sec. 253) was designed to permit civil courts to impose pressure on a Jewish husband to give his wife a "get" (religious bill of divorce) in divorce proceedings. Without a "get", the wife cannot remarry under Jewish religious law.
The statute requires the plaintiff in a divorce action to allege that he or she will take all steps within his or her power to remove any barrier to the defendant's remarriage following the divorce. In this case, while the husband was willing to give his wife a "get", he had previously obtained from a Jewish religious court a "Heter"-- a ruling that the wife was a "rebellious woman" who refused to accept a Get. In these civil proceedings, the wife argued that the Heter effectively acted as a barrier to her remarriage, because it branded her as a scandalized woman who could not be trusted to run a Jewish household. The court held that the Establishment Clause precluded it from inquiring into the propriety of the husband's actions in obtaining a Heter, since to do so would amount to unconstitutional entanglement of the court in religious doctrine.
