First, congratulations on your upcoming marriage! It is somewhat sad that we feel, at times like this, the need to protect ourselves against possible negative outcomes; I hope, in your case, this is an excess of caution and self-protection, and that your relationship with your future husband is a loving and mutually fulfilling one.
As to your questions, I guess that as an Orthodox rabbi, I have to question some of your fundamental assumptions. I know that it is common to say so, but I do not believe there is inequality in Jewish Law regarding marriage; Judaism chooses different strategies for constructing a productive marriage than Western society, but I think that careful study of the sources shows that few if any of those create inequality, and many of those apparent inequalities (such as in monetary issues) are less matters of law than a reflection of the society in which those monetary arrangements were conceived, but which are fully amenable to adaptation. So, for example, while American practice leaves the ketubbah stuck in the form it took back in the time of the Talmud, the ketubbah was actually meant as a document to lay out the financial responsibilities of the husband to reasonably and properly take care of his wife, according to the standard they had both agreed upon. Even if we no longer feel comfortable changing the ketubbah itself, there is no reason for a couple not to formulate such an agreement, to insure that both partners are well taken care of.
When you ask whether it is better to have a civil marriage, I think you are missing two points of Jewish law: first, there is a mitsvah in the Torah for Jews to get married in the Jewish way (with a two stage process, kiddushin and nisuin, the ring ceremony and then the symbolic living together). So one advantage of a Jewish wedding is that it fulfills a Divine command. The Torah does not fully explain why it has set up a different marriage process for Jews than non-Jews, but one possibility, it seems to me, is that the two stages emphasize that Jewish marriages are meant to last for the whole lives of the couples (there are many fewer legitimate reasons for divorce in Jewish law than accepted by Western society).
The question of divorce brings us to the second flaw in thinking that a civil marriage might be better than a Jewish one-- while civil marriage does not fulfill the mitsvah of Jewish marriage, it is quite possibly enough of a marriage to incur the requirement of divorce, which is what I assume you were looking to avoid. The one demonstrable area of disadvantage in Jewish marriage is not in the marriage at all, it is in its dissolution. So here, you might have thought that civil marriage would avoid the issue, but from a Jewish law perspective, it is not at all clear that it does.
Before I suggest an alternative, let me note that I think even that disadvantage has become exaggerated because of particular rabbinic rulings, but not the system itself. I think it is fully plausible to read the Talmud and important rabbis as saying that any time it has become clear that a couple will no longer live together as husband and wife, courts can coerce the husband to give his wife a get, a bill of divorce. Rabbinic rulings of the last several hundred years have gone in a different direction than that, and we have to work within the rulings of our time, but I do think it worth noting that this is not the system or the Torah's view-- as I mentioned before, the Torah's expectation was that marriage should be life-long (barring a few exceptional cases). When a case like that came up, and a husband refused to grant a divorce, the secondary expectation was that the court would effectively and expeditiously secure a get for the wife. Modern rabbinic practice has become leery of using coercion (overly cautious, in my personal view), creating some of the problem to which you allude.
But those same rabbis have worked hard to find a solution, and a popular one today is one that your rabbi can use to easily guard your-- the woman's-- position and assure safety and security. The RCA (Rabbinical Council of America) has formulated a prenuptial agreement that conforms with the strictest standards of halachah but has also proven highly effective in convincing husbands that they gain nothing by withholding a get. I would urge you to ask your rabbi about such an agreement, which I have repeatedly heard reduces the incidence of recalcitrant husbands to almost nil.
Once again, let me extend my best wishes on your forthcoming wedding, my hopes that you and your chosen one experience marriage as fulfilling, and that it lasts in health and happiness for the rest of your (long) life.
Answered by: Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
