Discrimination Against Men in Israeli Family Courts

Introduction to Gender Inequality in Israel Family Courts
Family Law in Israel is handled at two different Courts: Family Courts and Rabbinical Courts, Beth Din. Jurisdiction depends on a "race to file first" basis. Men who find themselves in the civil Family Courts are subjected to gender inequality. Men are being discriminated against by the Family Courts in Israel on an regular basis. The discrimination against men results in tremendous losses to the national labor force, exhaustion of individuals, enrichment of lawyers, overburdening of family Courts with needless proceedings, a drain on resources of social services and welfare, and most importantly, a whole generations of children are growing up in a world of conflicts, intra-family wars and quarrels, and are indoctrinated into a life of deprivation of love, selfishness, argumentative and confrontational behavior, as well as deprivation of adequate parental care.

The Legislature, the Knesset, is doing absolutely nothing to reform the statutory discriminatory conditions. The Executive Branch appoints countless of investigatory committees, but fails to adopt any findings, and Judges at Family Courts exercise vindictive behavior, deny Due Process, prolong proceedings, and deny the right to bring evidence or cross examination of witnesses. At the Appellate level, it is practically impossible to appeal Family Courts’ judgments and orders, because of excessive and unaffordable bonds to secure the appeal (almost $3,000), and the usual deference to the so called professional expertise of the trial Court, even when the trial Court does not conduct trials at all.
Criticism of Israel’s violations of men and fathers’ human rights is widespread in Israel. There are countless organizations advocating the rights of fathers to visitations with children. Fathers suffer from denial of visitation rights solely at the whim of the custodian mother, exorbitant child support orders well in excess of the father’s ability to pay, and sometimes even higher than the actual salary. Other fathers are filing for bankruptcy at increasing numbers. Most of them live under ne-exeat injunctions preventing them to leave the State of Israel, allegedly to secure the payment of child support with their own body as collateral. Many fathers simply escape the country, because of the constant barrage of false domestic violence orders, ex parte orders of protection, or orders of home-removal, and post judgment executions on their bank accounts, cars, properties and savings, all bearing unconscionable usurious interest and attorney fees, so no reasonable father can ever get rid of his debt.
The entire sphere of family life and family law in Israel is mired by chaos, conflicting decisions, inability to know what law to apply, lack of access to the law, insurmountable barriers to self representation.
In Israel, an increasing number of men, approximately, 9,000 every year are victims of a merciless system which violates human rights, and is inherently biased in favor of women. Divorces, custody or visitation litigation last several years in Courts, where intervals between hearings take 6 to 9 months, tremendous expenses on lawyers, countless invitations to "parental suitability" tests at Social Welfare services, or private institutions, and constant threats that a child might be involuntarily and forcibly removed to a foster home.
Israeli law contains a statutory presumption that children under the age of six belong with the mother, the . The same concept prevails regarding children above six years of age, as well. The father on the other hand, is not entitled to visitations as a matter of right, or as a matter of law. The father is expected to “obtain” consent from his estranged wife to see his children, or convince a State social worker that it is in the best interest of the child, that the child should see the father.
Fathers must pay child support according to their religious affiliation, and if they are Jewish, the mother’s income does not count for purposes of determining the appropriate child support award. In many cases, Courts impute incomes that do not exist to the father, or award arbitrary amounts, without any correlation of the child support award to the father’s salary, his own subsistence needs, or whatever is left after debt payment. Interim child support awards are made based on papers alone, with no hearing at all, and credible evidence is not necessary. The Courts routinely accept self serving and unsupported affidavits of the woman as to the husband’s income, as proof with probative value.
Israeli Social Services and Child Protection Services Biased Against Men
Recently, a parliamentary committee has published its report finding countless of inherent problems with the child protection services, the Slonim Nevo Commission Report. However, the report was abandoned.
Affirmative Discrimination in Favor of women in Family Court
Because it is said that Rabbinical Courts are predisposed to discriminate in favor of men, Family Courts exercise radical and vindictive affirmative discrimination in favor of women. As a result, the clash between two opposite and antagonistic forums causes Family Court Judges to adopt radical positions in favor women and against men.
Tender Years Presumption Favors Women In Custody trials

Gender based discrimination is engrained in the body of Israeli Family Law. The "Capacity and Guardianship Law" of 1962, Art. 25 contains the Tender Years Presumption. It is statutorily presumed that the best interests of the child are that custody be awarded to the mother. As a result, it is impossible for men to come to Courts on equal terms with their female spouses, and thus result of legal custody disputes is predetermined. The mother always wins together with substantial child support awards that in many cases are inflated and in many cases results in imprisonment of the husband for non-payment.
The Israeli Parliament appointed a Committee (the Dan Shnit Commission) to investigate parental division of responsibilities in family disputes, but as always in Israel, nothing has been done with the recommendations of the Commission to abolish the presumption which supports automatic female custodial rights.
Child support Orders Ignore Women’s Income
Discrimination exists in awards of child support. Whereas fathers' potential earning is always taken into account, and usually to the extreme levels of imputed income (as opposed to actual income), females' earning potential is ignored, thus causing unequal distribution of family resources based on gender discrimination. For example, Judge Tova Sivan at the Tel Aviv Family Court initially orders men to pay 40% of their income as child support for one child, without even reviewing hardships, debts and disposable income. Other men are not so lucky and they can be ordered to pay even 60% or 80% of their income to the mother.
The Israeli Parliament appointed a Commission, the Shifman Commission, to investigate gender disparities in child support orders, following several previous commissions, each recommending appointment of a subsequent commission. The Israeli Ministry of Justice refused to publish the Shifman recommendations, and there is no prospects to correct the gender disparities anytime soon.

What is even worse is that instead of adopting one standard formula that may enable parties to know in advance what would be the applicable award, each case is treated differently because of the false concept that each child has different “needs”. Thus, there is no incentive to mediation or amicable solutions, because the woman may always feel that she can do better in Court, depending on how victimized she can present herself to be, or how much sympathy she can draw.
Not only does this creates a tremendous waste, as each case has to be litigated, Israeli Family Court Judges require the woman to list each and every expense for the child, and for the father to deny each and every purported expense. Thus, Israeli Family Court Judges waste their own time, going through a garden-variety lists of “needs” for each child. Child awards is Israeli may look like this: “the mother claimed that the child needs ballet classes at $40 a month. The father stated that $20 a month for ballet classes was spent during the marital relationship. The court finds that the father should pay $40, so that the child is afforded maximum potential to enrich his/her education”, and the list may continue, just like this, regarding every petty expense. This, of course, could and should be avoided by standardizing treatment with standardized allowances, but all calls for standardizing child support formulas in Israel have failed.
Custody Trials In Israel Are Biased in Favor of women
Officially, the law states that both parents are co-guardians, but that is a meaningless concept that is not followed and carries no sanctions. Israel usually does not allow shared custody or joint custody, as opposed to ambivalent “joint-guardianship” concept, which is a only used to justify imposition of child support against the father in all circumstances. This results in a guaranteed judicial predisposition in favor of women in custody trials.
Discriminatory Domestic Violence Enforcement in Israel
Subsidiary legislation in law enforcement mandates discrimination in the treatment of domestic violence ("DV") complaints at the police precinct levels. Guideline 2.5 of Israel's Attorney General's Guidelines dictates that females' DV complaints result in immediate arrest of the males sometimes for periods of 96 hours with no corroborative evidence required, other than the phone call to the police. Guideline 2.5 (as drafted by Supreme Court Judge Edna Arbel) exempts and immunizes females from false complaint or false arrest charges. According to the Guidelines, the Police would not docket a DV complaint by a male against female, or ironically the police docket the complaint as a complaint initiated by the female.
This discriminatory Guideline results in 90%-95% of divorce cases beginning with false DV police complaints, automatically followed by an order of protection and removal of the male from his home and from his children for the duration of the divorce trial, which can last an average of 3-5 years.
The divestment of Judiciary Powers in favor of Social Workers
Almost every custody case is determined based on affidavits alone. Motions for visitations are adjourned pending social services reports. There has been a sharp rise in delegation of judiciary powers from the Family Court to Social Workers by special appointment as a Court-Aide Clerks, whose role are to submit a Social worker Report, recommend custody and visitations. In essence, the recommendations are rubber stamped by the Judges, and the social worker Court-Aide actually becomes the final arbitrators of every visitations case.
This abridges the right to a fair trial and equal access to legal remedies, because now in almost 100% of the cases such aides are appointed. In essence, this is a delegation of all judicial responsibilities to a welfare agent, who is vested with quasi-judicial powers, since the welfare agent's report is automatically "so ordered" and granted Judgment status without trial, cross examination or expert witnesses. The Family Courts have voluntarily stripped themselves of their Judicial roles in every contested divorce and separation case.
As a result, all Family Court judgments concerning custody and visitations are not the products of judicial work in an adversarial process, as usually known, practiced or accepted in a democratic society. Therefore, No judgment from an Israeli Family Court should be accorded foreign recognition, "reciprocity" or the equivalent of "full faith and credit" outside Israel, since it is not really a judgment in any sense of the word.
Social services and child protective services in Israel are the real judges in matrimonial cases. They enjoy full immunity and cannot be sued for negligence. Their reports are a verbose collection of rumors, fabrications and outright invasions of privacy, exposing the women’s wildest allegations in most graphic terms.
A parliamentary investigative Commission, the "Slonim-Nevo Commission” has recently published its work, finding that social workers appointed by Family Courts, act in conflict of interests, violate the trust and confidences that the spouses revealed to them, use undue threats of denial of visitation rights, forced removal of children (in case of single parents with limited incomes), and the threat of actual intrusion into the private homes of spouses. Financial remuneration to the social workers encourages them to aggravate the situation and perpetuate conflicts at least until children are over 18. As usual in Israel, the recommendations were not implemented.

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