Research-based guidance for religiously observant families navigating divorce across Massachusetts
Key takeaway: For many religiously observant couples, a civil divorce decree does not fully resolve their marital status under their faith tradition — requiring a parallel religious divorce proceeding that carries its own rules, timelines, and leverage dynamics. Research on the intersection of civil and religious divorce in Jewish, Catholic, and Islamic communities documents patterns of vulnerability and leverage that have direct implications for how the civil divorce is negotiated.
In secular legal terms, marriage ends with a civil divorce decree issued by a state court. But for millions of Americans whose religious identity is central to their lives, the civil decree resolves only part of the picture. In Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, and several other faith traditions, civil divorce does not sever the religious marriage bond — and without a formal religious divorce, remarriage within the faith community may be impossible, or children of a subsequent union may face significant religious consequences.
Massachusetts, with its large and religiously diverse population — substantial Jewish communities across Greater Boston and the suburbs, a historically prominent Catholic culture, and growing Muslim communities in Worcester, Boston, Springfield, and beyond — sees the civil-religious divorce intersection with particular frequency. For couples navigating this terrain, understanding what research shows about religious divorce processes and their interaction with civil proceedings is essential preparation.
The Jewish Get: Research on Agunot and Leverage
In Jewish law, a marriage is dissolved through a religious divorce document called a get, which must be voluntarily delivered by the husband to the wife. A woman who has not received a get is called an agunah — a chained woman — because she cannot remarry within the Jewish community or, in Orthodox practice, even date other men with marital intent. The requirement of the husband’s voluntary participation creates a structural leverage dynamic that has been extensively documented in the research literature.
Breitowitz’s foundational analysis of the agunah problem documented the ways in which get refusal is weaponized as leverage in civil divorce proceedings — with husbands withholding the get until favorable civil settlements are extracted.[1] Research by Graff on contemporary agunot in North America found that thousands of women are affected at any given time, with cases lasting from months to decades and causing profound harm to women’s ability to reconstruct their lives after the civil divorce.
Massachusetts legal approach: Massachusetts courts have addressed the get issue through the use of prenuptial agreements that include provisions obligating the husband to cooperate with the get process — an approach upheld by Massachusetts courts as enforceable contract provisions that do not entangle the civil courts in religious doctrine. Some synagogues now require such agreements as a condition of performing a religious marriage ceremony.[1]
Catholic Annulment: A Parallel Process With Different Stakes
The Catholic Church does not recognize civil divorce as dissolving a sacramental marriage. For divorced Catholics who wish to remarry within the Church, a declaration of nullity — commonly called an annulment — from a diocesan marriage tribunal is required. An annulment declares that the sacramental marriage never validly existed, typically on the grounds that one or both parties lacked the capacity or intent for valid matrimonial consent at the time of the wedding.[3]
Research by Zwack on Catholic annulment processes documents that the annulment proceeding is entirely separate from the civil divorce — it is governed by canon law, administered by Church tribunals, and proceeds independently of state court proceedings.[3] For the large Catholic population across Massachusetts, the temporal relationship between civil divorce and the annulment process requires planning: civil divorce must generally precede the annulment petition, but the annulment process can take one to several years and is not guaranteed to result in a declaration of nullity.
Unlike the Jewish get situation, the Catholic annulment process does not create the same leverage dynamics in civil proceedings — either party can petition the tribunal, and neither party’s civil rights are contingent on the other’s cooperation with the process. The stakes are religious and personal rather than creating a legal leverage asymmetry.
Islamic Divorce: Talaq, Khul’, and American Courts
Islamic divorce law encompasses several distinct forms of dissolution with different procedural requirements and different rights for each spouse. Talaq is the husband’s unilateral right of divorce; khul’ is a divorce initiated by the wife, typically in exchange for the return of her dowry (mahr); and divorce by mutual agreement is also recognized.[4]
Research on Islamic divorce in Western legal systems documents the complex interaction between Islamic family law principles and civil divorce proceedings. The mahr — the dower gift specified in the Islamic marriage contract — is a contractual obligation that American courts have increasingly treated as an enforceable contract, with Massachusetts courts among those that have upheld mahr agreements as binding civil contracts.[4] This means that the Islamic marriage contract and its financial provisions can have direct civil legal consequences that should be addressed in any divorce settlement.
Mediation and the Religious Dimension
The religious dimensions of divorce are areas where mediation has distinctive advantages over civil litigation. Courts are limited in the degree to which they can engage with religious doctrine — the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause constrains judicial involvement in religious proceedings — leaving religiously observant divorcing parties to navigate the religious dimension without the assistance of the civil court system.
Mediation, as a private process, is less constrained by those constitutional limitations and can accommodate the religious dimensions of a divorce in ways that courts cannot. A mediator working with an observant Jewish couple can explicitly address the get as part of the overall settlement framework — linking cooperation with the religious divorce to the civil agreement in ways that create appropriate incentives without improperly coercing religious practice. A mediator working with a Muslim couple can address the mahr and the process of Islamic divorce as integrated components of the overall resolution.
“Religious divorce is an area where families often feel completely unsupported — the civil court can’t help with the get or the annulment, and the religious community can’t help with the asset division or the parenting plan. Mediation can hold both dimensions at once. I work with families from across Massachusetts’s religious communities, and in every case, addressing the religious dimension as part of the overall process — not as an afterthought — produces better outcomes for everyone.”
— Massachusetts mediator Attorney Julia Rueschemeyer
Practical Steps for Religiously Observant Divorcing Couples
Research on best practices for religiously observant divorcing couples supports several practical recommendations. If a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can be used to establish religious divorce cooperation obligations before dissolution becomes a live issue, it should be. In the absence of such an agreement, addressing the religious divorce process early in settlement negotiations — rather than treating it as a post-civil-decree formality — reduces the risk of leverage games and ensures the religious dimension is treated with the seriousness it deserves.
Both parties should consult with religious authorities from their tradition, in addition to civil legal counsel and their mediator, so that the religious requirements of dissolution are fully understood and properly addressed in the settlement framework. For Massachusetts families navigating this intersection, the resources available through faith communities, religious legal scholars, and civil practitioners with experience in these issues make an informed and dignified resolution achievable.
References
- Breitowitz, Irving A. Between Civil and Religious Law: The Plight of the Agunah in American Society. Greenwood Press, 1993.
- Graff, Gil. “The get: Coercion and the Jewish divorce dilemma.” Journal of Jewish Communal Service1 (2007): 60–66.
- Zwack, Joseph P. Annulment: Your Chance to Remarry Within the Catholic Church. Harper & Row, 1983.
- Quraishi-Landes, Asifa. “Islamic Divorce in America.” The International Survey of Family Law (2008).