Simple Divorce Papers

According to the Supreme Court of Canada religious obligations are enforceable by Canadian courts. Well, at least some of them are. I can imagine many types of religious obligations which the Court would not enforce if their lives depended on it. It is probably truer to say that the Supreme Court will enforce religious obligations if it likes the outcome. In other words it has decided to start picking religious winners and losers.

The case involved a Jewish couple who obtained a legal divorce in 1980. The problem is that, in the Jewish religion, the woman was forbidden from re-marrying unless the man agreed to grant her a religious divorce as well. He finally relented and did so but only in 1995 once the woman had turned 47 years of age. The woman sued the man because he had waited until she was past the age of having children before agreeing to the religious divorce. The court ordered that the men pay the woman $47,000 in compensation for preventing her from having children by a second marriage.

Clearly the woman could have legally remarried but chose to respect her religion and not remarry until she obtained a religious divorce. The key word here is “chose”. Legally she could have remarried but she chose not to.

This decision of the Supreme Court transfers the consequences of one person’s choice to another person. It relieves the woman of the burden, the consequences, of her choice and places that burden on someone who did not exercise the choice. Check here tomorrow for part 2.

“For a fast, low-cost, lawyer-free legal divorce visit www.DivorceOnline.ca.”