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Political Attorney?s Denial of a Religious Divorce to His Wife Sparks Vocal and Conspicuous Outrage Throughout Their Common Religious Community

By Janet Langjahr

New York Husband and Pennsylvania Wife marry in New York in 2006. In time, they move to Maryland for Husband’s legal work in the Republican political organization.

By 2008, Wife decides she wants a divorce and returns, with their baby Daughter, to Pennsylvania.

Husband attempts to get a divorce court order for Wife to return to Maryland with Daughter, but the Maryland family court rejects Husband’s so-called emergency motion.

The family court awards Husband seemingly generous timesharing and visitation on three weekends of each month, with the qualification that only one of them may be exercised in Maryland.

But, because Husband, an Orthodox Jew, is forbidden by the strictures of his religion from traveling on Fridays from sundown until sundown on Saturdays, in practice, Husband avails himself of much less timesharing than he is actually awarded. Husband is reportedly angry and bitter over the visitation award.

In 2010, the family court grants Husband and Wife their divorce. But in the eyes of their religion and their religious community, Husband and Wife are still married – and not free to remarry others.

Because Husband refuses to grant Wife a “get”, an Orthodox Jewish religious divorce. Husband apparently feels that his dissatisfaction with the court-ordered timesharing arrangement justifies his withholding of consent to a get.

As a result, Husband is now the target of American Jewish media and American Jewish religious leaders and many individuals in Husband’s and Wife’s shared religious community. Hostilities toward Husband have even reached into Husband’s very secular workplace.

Read more in this New York Times article: Religious Divorce Dispute Leads to Secular Protest.

Full post as published by Florida Divorce - Child Custody - Domestic Abuse Law on January 07, 2011 (boomark / email).