Legal Commentary

The Law and Economics of Serial Divorce

By Ilya Somin

The Jerusalem Post has an interesting story about a man who is on his record 11th divorce:

A 50-year-old man from the Jerusalem area divorced for the 11th time, a new Israeli record for Jews, according to an announcement released Monday by the Rabbinical Court Administration.

The man, whose divorces were performed both in Israel and abroad in accordance with Halacha, said his custom is to divorce his wives every two years and look for a new bride immediately after.

?I throw out a hook and the fish come on their own,? the man reportedly said.

In his latest marriage, which also lasted two years, the two sides split the debts the husband had accrued. The woman claimed her husband had promised to work but ended up living off her assets and those of her parents.

From all his marital escapades the man has only one child, to whom he is unable to make child support payments.

This story raises several interesting law and economics questions. First, what is the reasoning process of the women who agree to marry this guy? After he has been divorced even three or four times in a short period, the odds are that any future marriages he enters into won?t last long or end happily. Yet seven or eight women agreed to marry him after he had already been divorced several times in just a few years. Perhaps these women were so desperate that even this dubious character was better than their alternative options. But given that the divorce happens quickly and he seems to leech off of the bride?s resources in the meantime, marrying him might very well be worse than staying single permanently. An alternative explanation is that he managed to hide his record of divorce from them. However, it seems reasonable to try to get to know the background of anyone you marry in advance. He would have to be an exceptionally skilled liar to cover up so many divorces, and for all I know perhaps he is.

Another interesting issue is where he gets the money to finance so much divorce litigation. The Post story suggests that he has little or no income other than what he manages to get from his successive wives. His lack of financial means should, of course, make him even less attractive as a marriage partner, and renders his ?success? in marrying so many women all the more difficult to explain.

Finally, I wonder if it?s legal under Jewish law to enter into a marriage with the specific intention of getting a divorce within two years (Israel has no secular marriage law, so marriages between Jews are governed by Jewish religious law). Doing so seems to violate the spirit of the institution and is also a fraud on the bride. If it really isn?t legal, couldn?t this man?s wives simply have their marriages voided and thereby obviate any obligation to pay him alimony or take on any of his debts? After all, he has publicly admitted his intentions (at least with respect to every marriage after the first one). I?m no expert in either family law or Jewish law, so perhaps there is an obvious answer to this question that I am missing.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on December 29, 2009 (boomark / email).