Tilsen v. Benson
Citations
- 347 Conn. 758
Syllabus
The plaintiff appealed from the trial court's judgment dissolving his marriage to the defendant, challenging certain of the trial court's financial orders and claiming that the trial court had improperly denied his motion to enforce, as a prenuptial agreement, the terms of the parties' ketubah, which is a contract governing marriage under Jewish law. The parties signed the ketubah shortly before they were married, and it provided in relevant part that the defendant was to be the plaintiff's ''wife according to the laws of Moses and Israel'' and that they ''agreed to divorce . . . one another . . . according to Torah law . . . .'' After marrying, the plaintiff found employment as a rabbi at a Conservative synagogue in New Haven, where he served for nearly three decades. During that time, the defendant, who was educated and trained as an attorney, worked in the legal and nonprofit fields, but she had not worked as an attorney since 2015. The defendant, however, was the primary caregiver to the parties' children and had numerous responsibili- ties in connection with her role as the rabbi's wife. After initiating the present dissolution action in 2018, the plaintiff moved for an order confirming that the ketubah was valid and enforceable, and he requested that any asset division and support orders be entered in accordance with Hebrew law based on the ketubah's choice of law provision. According to the plaintiff, application of such law would result in an equal division of marital property, excluding individual property acquired through a gift or bequest not specifically conveyed to the other spouse, and would preclude alimony or claims against future income. In connection with the plaintiff's motion, the parties submitted conflicting affidavits from various rabbis about alimony and property division under Torah law. The trial court denied the plaintiff's motion. Applying the neutral principles of law approach to determine whether a civil court may consider a claim impli
How courts have described this case
Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.
- noting that a law falls within the historical punishment of a bar to employment only where there are concerns that the restrictions it imposes violate fundamental guarantees of political and religious freedom
- noting that a law falls within the historical punishment of a bar to employment only where there are concerns that the restrictions it imposes violate fundamental guarantees of political and religious freedom
- upholding 1996 Act restrictions on the BOCs’ ability immediately to provide in-region long distance service
- observing “the Supreme Court has approved other line-of- business restrictions without ever suggesting that the restrictions constituted ‘punishment’” (collecting cases)
- finding the functional test unsatisfied because \it [could not] be legitimately suggested that the risks of anticompetitive conduct were so feeble that no one could reasonably assert them except as a smoke screen for some invidious purpose\ (internal quotation marks omitted)
- finding the functional test unsatisfied because “it [could not] be legitimately suggested that the risks of anticompetitive conduct were so feeble that no one could reasonably assert them except as a smoke screen for some invidious purpose” (internal quotation marks omitted)
Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).
Judges: Robinson; McDonald; D’Auria; Mullins; Ecker; Alexander
Read full opinion on CourtListenerSourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).
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