1,841. A Woman Who Returns from Overseas Alone

Hilchos Geirushin 12:15

Let’s say that there’s a presumption that a woman is married. She and her husband travel overseas while their relationship and the general global situation are both peaceful. If she later returns and reports that her husband died, her word is accepted and she is permitted to marry or to perform yibum (levirate marriage) as a result. This is because we assume that a woman isn’t looking to bring trouble on herself, prohibiting her to both her original and new husbands, losing her claim to the money owed to her by her kesubah from both husbands, and having her children ruled illegitimate should such a lie be revealed. If she were to claim her husband was dead and he wasn’t, he would ultimately turn up alive – or we’d at least hear about it – so there would simply be no defending the lie. Similarly, if one witness testifies that the husband died, the woman is allowed to remarry based on this testimony because the truth would eventually become known. Similarly, the testimonies of a male servant, a woman, a female servant and a witness reporting hearsay are all accepted when it comes to a person’s death. A woman is permitted to remarry or to perform yibum on the basis of such testimony.

Hilchos Geirushin 12:16

Anyone who testifies about such matters is believed except for five women, who are presumed to hate one another: a woman’s mother-in-law, her mother-in-law’s daughter, another wife of her own husband, her brother-in-law’s wife and her stepdaughter. Their testimony is not accepted regarding the death of this woman’s husband husband so that they can’t cause her to become prohibited to him when he’s still alive. A non-Jew’s words in the course of regular conversation are accepted and can be used to allow a woman to remarry, as we shall see, but if the non-Jew speaks with the intention that his words be taken as testimony, then his statement is inadmissible.