Halakhah zu Dewarim 25:7

Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin (Teshuvot Ivra 80) and Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin (L’or Hahalachah p. 67) note that the preferred method to avoid wartime agunot is for a married soldier to divorce his wife with a conventional get before he leaves for war. The advantage of solving the problem in this manner is that it is a straightforward halachic procedure.³Halachically valid conditions are complex and must meet specific criteria in order to be valid. See Shulchan Aruch (E.H. 143-148) for the many detailed regulations that apply to conditional gittin. Indeed, Rabbeinu Yechiel of Paris (cited in the Mordechai, Gittin 423) instituted the practice that if a get is administered when a childless husband is deathly ill in order for the wife to avoid chalitzah,⁴Chalitzah is the ceremony (outlined in Devarim 25:7-10) in which the brother of a man who died childless officially declines to marry the deceased’s widow, thereby permitting her to remarry. the get should not be given on condition that the husband dies (so that the couple will remain married if he recovers). Instead, the couple should conduct a standard get and solemnly promise⁵This involves both parties accepting, on pain of excommunication, the obligation to remarry if the husband recovers. In addition, a significant financial penalty would be imposed upon a recalcitrant party. to remarry should the husband recover.⁶I recall a case in the 1990s in which a husband was undergoing very risky surgery and wished to give his wife a get so that she would not remain an agunah if the surgery rendered him incapacitated and incompetent. Rav Peretz Steinberg, a noted dayan from Queens, New York, conducted a conventional get. Similarly, Rav Yonah Reiss reports that when the Beth Din of America deals with husbands suffering from an early stage of Alzheimer’s disease, a conventional get is conducted. Indeed, the Maharsha (in his concluding comment to Masechet Gittin) cites the aforementioned view of Rabbeinu Tam that wartime gittin were conducted unconditionally as proof that all gittin should be executed in this way.

12) On the day of the halitza the five judges should come to the place they set, and the three primary judges sit on one bench REMA: the senior one sits in the middle. And the two additional (judges) sit in front of them on another bench, REMA: there are those that say they sit on the side, and so is the custom. And the brother in law and the widow stand in the middle. REMA: the brother in law and the widow should go to the judges, and not the judges to them, as it says "his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders" Deuteronomy 25:7. Nonetheless, if the judges went to them, the halitza is not negated.

If one has five sons and they appoint their father as an agent to betroth for them⁸⁶(a woman). and the father of the sons says to one who has five daughters “One of your daughters is betrothed to one of my sons,” and the father accepts the betrothal,⁸⁷i.e., betrothal money. each one requires a bill of divorce from each brother. If one brother dies, all of them⁸⁸i.e., the daughters. require four bills of divorce and Halizah⁸⁹When the levin does not marry the yevamah (see note 30) the ceremony of Ḥalizah takes place, whereby the woman becomes released from the levirate tie and free to marry someone else. The ceremony is described in and originates from Deut. 25:7-10. The Ḥalizah ceremony is designed to shame the levin for not building up his brother’s house. The ceremony is completely described in Halchot Yevamot. (See article in the Encyclopedia Judaica vol. 13.) from one of them.