There has been a sharp drop in the number of marrying couples signing prenuptial agreements since their introduction by the Office of the Chief Rabbi 20 years ago to prevent the incidence of agunot, women trapped in a dead marriage.
Whereas 45 per cent of couples registering for marriage at the Chief Rabbi's Office signed agreements (PNAs) in 1996, that had declined to 40 per cent in 2010 and slid to 28 per cent last year.
The agreement committed couples to go to a Beth Din in the event of marital difficulties and ensure that if the marriage did break up, a get, a religiously valid divorce, was arranged.
Without a get, a Jewish woman cannot remarry according to Jewish law and any children from a subsequent union would be stigmatised as mamzerim, illegitimate.
A spokesman for the Chief Rabbi's Office said it had been investigating the reasons for the drop as part of a review of marriage registration procedures over the past year.
He said that couples were "reluctant to address the issue of divorce at a time of such celebration."
He added that "changes to the marriage authorisation process to include a number of other rabbis at the interview stage, has made it more difficult to centrally manage the way that the signing of the PNA is raised with them."
Another reason, he suggested, was that couples felt that "it's not necessary to sign a PNA" because they had greater protection in civil law.
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