1,984. When Beis Din Issues the Warning

Hilchos Sotah 1:10

The court (rather than the husband) issues warnings to suspect women whose husbands have lost the ability to communicate or who have lost their mental competency, or whose husbands are overseas or imprisoned. The idea isn’t to have these women drink the bitter water, just that they might forfeit the money due them by their kesubahs.

Hilchos Sotah 1:11

The court warns a woman in the following scenario: if they become aware that people are gossiping about a woman, they call her in and tell her not to be secluded with a particular man. If witnesses later come and testify that she was secluded with this man and remained secluded long enough to engage in intimacy, then the court prohibits her to her husband forever and invalidates her kesubah. When the husband returns, recovers or is released from prison, he must give her a get. He can’t make her drink the bitter water because he wasn’t the one who imposed the warning on her.