The Supreme Court ruled on Monday night that spouses do not have a legal duty to reveal their true sexual preference to their partners.
In a case in which an ex-wife tried to sue her ex-husband for failing to reveal to her that he was gay and secular instead of heterosexual and religious, as he had represented himself to be over 10 years, a three-justice panel expressed sympathy, but said the judiciary was the wrong forum.
More specifically, the ex-wife demanded the return of various funds her family had provided the couple and the ex-husband under false pretenses.
Essentially, Justices Yael Wilner, Noam Sohlberg and Uzi Vogelman said that there were all kinds of moral problems with the ex-husband having lied to his wife and with him living a double life for a decade, but there was no legal fix.
The decision overturned a ruling of the Jerusalem District Court, which had overturned a ruling by the Jerusalem Family Court.
Initially, the Jerusalem Family Court rejected the claim as having no legal basis or remedy within the court system.
However, the ex-wife appealed and the Jerusalem District Court ordered the case back down to the lower court to conduct a trial on the issues in dispute.
Next, the ex-husband appealed to the Supreme Court, which endorsed the earlier view of the Jerusalem Family Court, ending the case.
The couple had been married for around a decade when they divorced in 2016 upon the wife learning that the husband had been living a double life for years: with her as a religious heterosexual and elsewhere as a secular homosexual.
Part of the claims appeared to involve the fact that the wife’s family helped the couple economically in paying for their residence and helped the husband’s business as a lawyer.
The daughter of the couple also joined the wife in the lawsuit.
But ultimately the court said any economic issues were tied up inextricably with the legal decision concerning the couple’s relationship.
While disapproving of the husband’s dishonesty, the court said that the judiciary is not the place to police the dynamics and genuineness of a couple’s promises and intimate issues between each other.