What Was She Thinking?
‘I Did So Only To Please My Husband’
(Bava Basra 49b)
The general rule is that all of a man’s property is encumbered for payment of his wife’s kesuba. Therefore, in the event a husband sold his property and subsequently dies or divorces his wife, she has the right to seize that property from her husband’s buyers because she has a lien on it.
The Gemara cites the Mishna in Gittin (55b) that relates the following scenario. A husband sold property that was encumbered by his wife’s kesuba. The buyer, realizing the tenuousness of such a purchase, approached the wife as well to acquire her rights to the field. The Mishna, nevertheless, rules such a sale to be invalid.
The Gemara on our daf explains the reason to invalidate a sale even where she seemed to be in agreement. She may offer the argument, “I did so only to please my husband.”
Coercion
Rashbam (s.v. “Teima nachas ruach…”) wonders why this argument is sufficient to invalidate the sale – for even if we accept her argument that she did so only to please her husband, have we not previously learned (supra 47a) that a coerced sale is indeed valid?
Rashbam explains that there is a difference between this case and that one (47a). Over there the discussion centers on an individual who is being tormented by oppressors in order that he agree to the sale – where in order to escape the torment he readily agrees to the sale. However, here the woman is not a victim, a subject of torment, rather she merely wishes to live peacefully with her husband and as such she mouths her agreement. Yet this is furthest from her real desire for in her heart she really does not agree to the sale.
Some Gift
Ramban (Novella ad loc.) asks the following: If indeed the woman’s desire to live peacefully with her husband – due to her fear of angering him – does not qualify as coercion, then logically her consent to the sale should be unquestioned and should be considered genuine.
Indeed Ramban maintains that where one bought property encumbered by a kesuba and later paid the wife for her rights to that property, the sale is valid. He argues that the case in the Mishna cited by our Gemara where such a sale is invalidated is referring to a situation where the woman received no money for her consent. Rather, she gifted her rights to the property albeit under pressure, which we deduce from the Gemara (supra 48a) as not being valid.
