Resources for Kesubos daf 55
מראה מקומות
1. The גמרא says that the תוספת כתובה is collected from זיבורית just like the כתובה itself. This is as opposed to a normal loan where the lender can collect from בינונית. There is a fascinating question the שער המשפּט discusses in סימן ק"ב ס"ק א. He asks what is the הלכה if someone is randomly מחייב themselves money to someone else, can that person collect from בינונית? The basis of the question is that the reason חז"ל were מתקן for a בעל חוב to collect from בינונית is שלא תנעול דלת בפני לווין. That is, if we would force a lender to collect from זיבורית then no one would lend money. However, in this case, a person is being מחייב himself money on his own so maybe the receiver should only be allowed to collect from זיבורית? Or do we say לא פּלוג? He brings many proofs but seems to lean towards the receiver being able to collect from בינונית but doesn’t end off with a clear proof. The שו"ת אבני נזר סימן שי"ח quotes this שער המשפּט and just notes to look in our גמרא with no comment, as if to say that our גמרא is a clear ראיה! In other words, a person signing on to a תוספת כתובה is just being מחייב himself money for no reason, and we see it only gets collected as זיבורית because it is considered a part of the כתובה, but had it not been it would collect from בינונית. We see from here that the receiver can normally collect from בינונית even if the חוב was because of a self imposed התחייבות.
In a somewhat related issue, the גמרא tells us that תוספת כתובה can still be collected after שמיטה. רש"י explains that the חידוש is that we don’t say that תוספת כתובה is like any other loan-type transaction where שמיטה would require that the loan is cancelled. תוספות in ד"ה שביעית asks that this should not be a חידוש at all since the תוספת כתובה is not a loan. Rather, it’s just a התחייבות that the person accepts upon himself and should be similar to the payment owed to a worker or buying from a grocer on credit where we say anything that isn’t a loan is not cancelled due to שמיטה. The הפלאה say he does not understand what תוספות means. How is borrowing $100 any different than if a person tells someone “I am מתחייב myself to you $100 in a שטר”? תוספת כתובה is exactly that. He is just making himself owe money. It seems תוספות holds that at the end of the day it’s not done דרך הלואה and רש"י holds that it is considered similar to a הלוואה and is only not משמט because it is connected to the עיקר כתובה which is a תנאי בית דין.
2. The גמרא says that if someone tells witnesses to write and sign a contract giving something to someone else, there is a מחלוקת whether the עדים should re-ask the person if he still wants to give it before they do it. The רא"ש and ריטב"א both ask the same question: why?? Why would you need to check with him if he already told you to do it? The ריטב"א adds that we have a rule that חזקה שליח עושה שליחותו so if the person didn’t run after the עדים to tell them he changed his mind why would we think he changed his mind? The רא"ש answers that the fact that the person wasn’t just מקנה the item to the man with קנין חליפּין where the man would have been קונה immediately but rather told them to write a שטר which takes time and effort tells us that he wasn’t so sure if he wanted to give it so we need to ask him if he changed his mind. The ריטב"א brings from the רב אברהם אב ב"ד that we are talking about a case where the person told them to write a כתובה to his ארוסה to be given at the wedding in which case by that time he may have changed his mind. However, had he told them to write a כתובה at the time of the wedding itself then they do not need to check with him again.
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