Background
The petitioner and the fourth respondent married in 2006 and have a son. In November 2023, the respondent filed for divorce in the Tel Aviv–Jaffa Regional Rabbinical Court and joined the child-support dispute to that proceeding. After the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2025 that rabbinical courts then lacked jurisdiction over child support merely joined to a divorce action, the petitioner twice asked the Regional Rabbinical Court to close the support proceeding. The court refused and, in its second decision, ordered temporary support.
The petitioner then filed a child-support action in the Tel Aviv–Jaffa Family Court, which ruled in November 2025 that it had jurisdiction and also ordered temporary support. Later that month, Amendment No. 6 to the Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction Law took effect. The temporary amendment expressly authorized rabbinical courts to adjudicate children’s economic needs joined to divorce proceedings and extended that authority to certain pending cases. After the rabbinical proceeding was transferred to Rehovot, that court held that the amendment gave it exclusive jurisdiction because its jurisdictional and support rulings preceded the Family Court’s rulings. The Great Rabbinical Court ultimately denied the petitioner leave to appeal.
The petitioner sought relief in the High Court of Justice, arguing that the rabbinical courts’ original decisions were void because they lacked jurisdiction under the law then governing and therefore could not provide a basis for jurisdiction under the later amendment. The respondent countered that he had not timely challenged the earlier decisions through the prescribed appellate process.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the petition. Amendment No. 6 expressly applies to a child-support claim joined to a divorce action that remained pending when the amendment took effect. It also provides that, when the Family Court and rabbinical court issued conflicting jurisdictional decisions, jurisdiction rests with the rabbinical court if its decision came first. Because the divorce action remained pending and the Regional Rabbinical Court’s relevant decisions preceded the Family Court’s decision, the rabbinical court had jurisdiction under the law now in force.
The Court acknowledged that, under the law applicable when the Regional Rabbinical Court issued its first two decisions, that court lacked jurisdiction over the child-support dispute. But the petitioner did not seek timely leave to appeal those decisions to the Great Rabbinical Court, and they had become final more than a year earlier. Even apart from finality, the High Court ordinarily will not grant relief when a petitioner failed to exhaust an available alternative remedy; an original High Court petition cannot be used to circumvent established appellate procedures and deadlines.
The Court therefore found no basis to intervene in the Great Rabbinical Court’s decision. It ordered the petitioner to pay the respondent NIS 4,000 in costs.
Key Takeaways
- Amendment No. 6 applies to qualifying child-support claims that were joined to divorce proceedings and remained pending when the amendment took effect.
- Where the Family Court and rabbinical court issued conflicting jurisdictional decisions, the amendment assigns jurisdiction to the rabbinical court if its qualifying decision was issued first.
- A party generally cannot bypass an unexhausted or expired rabbinical appellate remedy by filing an original petition in the High Court of Justice, even when the challenged decisions were jurisdictionally erroneous under the law then in force.
Why It Matters
The decision explains how Israel’s new statutory grant of child-support jurisdiction to rabbinical courts operates in cases already underway when the amendment took effect. Timing is decisive: a pending joined claim and an earlier rabbinical-court decision may place the dispute within the rabbinical court’s jurisdiction despite a later, conflicting Family Court ruling.
The ruling also underscores the procedural importance of promptly appealing jurisdictional decisions. The Court recognized that the rabbinical court lacked jurisdiction when it issued its initial rulings, but it would not revive challenges that had become final after the petitioner failed to pursue the prescribed appellate route.