Connecticut rejects Illinois opinion on ‘ketubahs’ in Jewish divorce case

Trial Notebook

By Steven P. Garmisa

Hoey & Farina

Posted October 11, 2023 10:40 AM

Jon-Jay Tilsen and Miriam Bensen signed a “ketubah,” a Jewish marriage contract, before their 1989 wedding. In 2018, when Tilsen initiated divorce proceedings in Connecticut, he asked a judge to enforce the ketubah as a prenuptial agreement governing “asset division and support award orders.”Written in Hebrew and Aramaic, the ketubah said that if the marriage soured, Tilsen and Benson “agreed to divorce one another according to custom all the days of their life according to Torah law as is the manner of Jewish people …

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