Please read discussion comments about the expert article on the get conflict below For the religious process see Get divorce document A get or ghet is a Jewish bill of divorce which is supervised by a Beth Din which is a rabbinical court in the city or jurisdiction where one lives This page deals with the Conflict of Laws or civil law implications vs Judaic Law religious law when a women does not get her ghet and is kept in agunah which means chained For a discussion of the purely religious implications see religious divorce Discussion Jewish communities have maintained a strong desire for religious cultural and economic autonomy Jewish Law is administered and enforced Judaic Lawin Israel and in the Diaspora through Bet Dins Houses of Judges Judaic Law holds that the man must initiate the request for the Jewish Divorce get and the woman must agree to receive the get The relationship between state and religion Jewish law or religious law is not justiciable in societies with the civil law doctrine of separation of Church and State which can sometimes cause conflict for women who remain in agunah One of the most common divorce difficulties is that a spouse can be held in a limping marriage when the other spouse refuses co operation in the religious form of divorce see Agunah A civil divorce can be obtained through local courts which entitles the parties to remarry civilly but the capacity to remarry is also religious question Where one party has the power to grant or withhold a religious divorce this power can be used as a bargaining tool to pressure the other party to agree more or less favourable terms for residence and contact with children and for maintenance and property settlements Such provisions produce a conflict between the human rights of the woman to be free to marry and the freedom of people to practise their religion see Article 18 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is repeated almost word for word in Article 9 1 European Convention on Human Rights International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief The difficulty is that most countries operate under constitutions based on a separation between church and state which forbid governments from interfering in the practice of religion within their territory unless the behaviour of one or more parties is in breach of the local civil or criminal law Thus for example in Rhodesia the case of Berkowitz v Berkowitz 1956 3 SA 522 SR held that it was inappropriate to use contempt proceedings to force a husband to grant a get because anything concerned exclusively with religious formalities was outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts Nevertheless the majority of Western states do to some extent make the secular court s response to matrimonial proceedings conditional on the relevant party taking the steps necessary to complete a religious divorce on fair terms so that either the court will impose excessively generous orders for maintenance and property settlement or deny access to a civil decree or to ancillary relief until the religious formalities have been completed Canada In Canada following consultation with all major religious groups the Divorce Act was amended in 1985 to add Section 21 1 to give the courts have the power to dismiss any application and strike out any pleadings and affidavits filed by a spouse who has failed to remove religious barriers to the remarriage of the other spouse The legislature intended to place spouses on a more equal footing in civil divorce actions encourage women in particular to exercise fully their rights under the law and maintain the integrity of the Divorce Act 1985 by helping to ensure that refusing to accept or to give a religious divorce was not used as a bargaining tool to gain unfair concessions on child custody and access or monetary support This reflects a general strong response at a federal level to any elements of duress or undue influence within the civil law system Bruker v Marcovitz The justiciability of a civil contract with religious overtonese is now being tested in the Supreme Court Case of Bruker v Marcovitz See Canadian Civil