Wedding Hall Blues - Broken Eng and Hall wont Give $ Back

amother

Mon, Aug 19 2013, 5:26 pm

OP here. Since you asked…

I have nothing colnclusive to report. On Aug 6, DH went out to BD. Sure enough, the menahel didn't show. The mazkir got him on the phone and he said he didn't realize the diyun was for today since there won't be any court case until Aug 19 (which happens to be today). DH was incredul;ous because he told the BD on July 23 that the court hearing was on the coming Thursday (July 25) and now he is telling us something else??

The menahel said he doesn't know why we think it was for earlier but we are mistaken. The mazkir told the menahel to send him a copy of the court summons and that's how the call ended. After the call, DH told him that he clearly said in front of BD that the court hearing was for the coming Thursday so the mazkir looks up in his computer and played back the audio (mp3?) recording of the discussion in BD. The recording said at least twice that he told BD that there is a hearing on Thurs. Also the recording said that BD straight out said that the next session is on Aug 6 so he had no excuse not to show.

DH demanded to name the menahel as the official nitva (instead of the partnership) and the mazkir said he wants to see what the summons says. If it indicates that the menahel is also a partner then there will be no problem to go after him personally (and forget the other owners).

DH went away for a week and just got back. Tonite he spoke to the mazkir who said he got the summons and it looks like the menahel is a partner so he will send a last hazmana for the menahel to come to BD and he will have to take the case on his shoulders regardless of everyone else. If he refuses, we will almost certainly get a heter for court.

BTW, I thought it was cute that the moderator pulled my thread out of the religious affairs ministry (Simcha section) and put it into the finance ministry.

Yair Lapid strikes again!

amother

Tue, Aug 20 2013, 5:29 am

Barbara wrote:

So, your husband told them that you need to cancel. He told them to get other people for the date. They did. The contract said that if that happened, they retain the deposit. What am I missing?

Evidently, you are missing the part about that DH only "told" them to get other people with a stipulation that when they do, we get reimbursed. Every time! When he "told" them orally, he stipulated it orally. when he told them in writing, he stipulated it in writing.

This was all clearly stated in the parts of your post that you quoted from me. You seem to be deliberately ovelooking this minor point because you seem to want to overlook this minor point.

Other posters are not overlooking it.

BTW, the contract does not say that if we tell them to get other people al daas that we get reimbursed, that they retain the deposit.

Barbara wrote:

Oh, that even though your husband signed a contract saying that the hall would keep the deposit, he didn't intend to comply with that provision of the contract.

What is certain is he (we) did not intend to have any reason to cancel the evnt. DH says this is what renders a clause like this into an asmachta which makes a clause like this invalid by Halacha.

Even so, we are not putting all our bets on the asmachta factor as much as we are on the conditional relase factor.

As for the "story": nothing has changed from what I wrote nor have the two posters who said something changed pointed out exactly what it is.

ally

Tue, Aug 20 2013, 8:44 am

vintagebknyc wrote:

please, the story has changed.

and you can't get out of a clause because you think the clause isn't going to happen.

for example, life insurance: you buy life insurance, the company promises you xx. you drop dead. the company says "hmm, I didn't think she'd drop dead" and doesn't want to pay.

a contract is a contract is a contract. why you keep coming back here to continually prove you are correct, when in fact your version of events shows you are clearly in the wrong, is mind boggling

Speaking of insurance, it seems to me that the deposit is actually a form of insurance.
For the buyer, it means that if they cancel, they are not liable for the full fee. The hall may or may not be able to fill the spot - in some instances, they absorb the loss while in others they "make" extra money by keeping the deposit and re-renting the hall. While from the OPs perspective the hall didn't lose out in her case (because they found someone else to fill the spot), the hall needs to minimize the net losses resulting from cancellations.

greenfire

Tue, Aug 20 2013, 9:36 am

amother wrote:

Barbara wrote:

So, your husband told them that you need to cancel. He told them to get other people for the date. They did. The contract said that if that happened, they retain the deposit. What am I missing?

the wedding hall makes the contract - not your dh ... he either signs it as is, or doesn't get it at all

vintagebknyc wrote:

for example, life insurance: you buy life insurance, the company promises you xx. you drop dead. the company says "hmm, I didn't think she'd drop dead" and doesn't want to pay.

right on target ...

shoshb

Wed, Aug 21 2013, 8:38 am

amother wrote:

Even if I accepted your explanation of the idea of Asmachta, which I can't because it renders Halachic contracts useless, how can you, with a straight face call this situation unforseeable? You yourself had another child with a broken engagement, and your husband asked over and over, what if the engagement breaks up? This was not a situation you had never heard of; you were well aware that it CAN happen, and it even DID happen to you once in the past.

What if I would have called the hall the day after you confirmed your wedding, and asked for that date. After the menahel told me it was unavailable, I offered him 3 times the going rate. Would you expect him to honor your contract? Or could he say, "Asmachta!! I never thought someone else would offer me triple, so my contract with you is not valid".

amother

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 8:18 am

OP here.

Wow!

I am not sarcastic by nature but it’s hard to resist.

All of you great Talmudic scholars who apparently know everything about asmachtas are really teaching us a big lesson. My goodness! My DH must have never opened up a sefer in his life! How could he even think of presenting an argument like an asmachta in light of all the brilliant unequivocal arguments that you fine educated ladies are presenting? You women are absolutely right. What were we thinking???

The truth is my DH is getting very amused by your rantings. (I am not – just annoyed). Do you think we live on an island and are fantasizing legal and halachic arguments that really don’t exist? We live in JERUSALEM!!! Do you know how many of our friends and neighbors are dayanim?? Do you think with all our regular issues dealing with the education system, shidduchim and cutbacks we have nothing to do but spin our wheels on a dead end claim where “we are obviously in the wrong”??

Get real!

According to DH, if you do not understand what is an asmachta and why it works (DH gave me a whole big lesson which is much too tedious to write here – and anyway, the scoffers will just go on scoffing) why expose your ignorance to everybody?

Just one short thought that DH brought up: aren’t we all imamothers? Don’t we all have kesubos? Have any of you read theirs? What does it say on the last line? (I won’t say, look at it yourselves.) Also, if any of you have these prenups that are popular by the Modern Orthodox, it either says the same thing or it is totally useless.

Why is that? How can an asmachta invalidate an entire contract? Hey – a contract is a contract is a contract.

Think about it.

P.S. Don’t be so sure that a life insurance policy (which your kesuba basically is) is not an asmachta.

shalhevet

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 8:38 am

Listen, amother. I know very little about business halacha and nothing about asmachtas. I don't know about what Israeli law says about this either.

But I do know one thing. You signed a contract with a certain clause. This clause wasn't written in size 5 font and you didn't notice it. You certainly did notice it because you discussed that clause before you signed the contract. You could have said on the spot - we will only sign this clause if you change it to say that we will only lose NIS 1,000 if we have to cancel and you find someone else. You could have refused to sign such a contract and gone to book a different hall. People have explained here why a hall is justified in having such a clause.

But you didn't. So, as Torah Jews you should keep your word. You signed that you lose the money if you cancel. The hall did not steal from you, did not take anything not previously agreed on.

And maybe halachically you are right. And maybe legally you are right. But 'lo charva Yerushalayim ela sheheemidu es divreihem al din Torah' - Yerushalayim was destroyed because they kept to the strict letter of the din. Maybe (no idea) in strict halacha you are right. But morally this is not nice. You signed something. Keep to your word.

amother

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 9:05 am

shalhevet wrote:

Listen, amother. I know very little about business halacha and nothing about asmachtas. I don't know about what Israeli law says about this either.

But you didn't. So, as Torah Jews you should keep your word. You signed that you lose the money if you cancel. The hall did not steal from you, did not take anything not previously agreed on.

And maybe halachically you are right. And maybe legally you are right. But 'lo charva Yerushalayim ela sheheemidu es divreihem al din Torah' - Yerushalayim was destroyed because they kept to the strict letter of the din. Maybe (no idea) in strict halacha you are right. But morally this is not nice. You signed something. Keep to your word.

I am sorry to remind you and everybody that the hall also signed the contract. They took our money and were obligated to reserve our date. They sold the date that we paid for to somebody else (and profited on it, BTW).

We call that stealing!

So, as far as we are concerned, the hall stole our date. We did not give it back to them as a gift. This was stipulated in writing as much as everything else. We were prepared to keep our contract and keep the date. It was as much in their interest as ours to invalidate the contract and take back the date. We said (in writing) they can do so if we are reimbursed in kind.

As Torah Jews they are obligated to live up to their contract. For them to hold our money and rebook our date at a profit without authorization from us to do is more than not morally nice. It is outright geneiva.

I am sorry but we reeject your pureminded mussar.

JAWSCIENCE

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 9:12 am

amother wrote:

Just one short thought that DH brought up: aren’t we all imamothers? Don’t we all have kesubos? Have any of you read theirs? What does it say on the last line? (I won’t say, look at it yourselves.) Also, if any of you have these prenups that are popular by the Modern Orthodox, it either says the same thing or it is totally useless.

Why is that? How can an asmachta invalidate an entire contract? Hey – a contract is a contract is a contract.

Think about it.

P.S. Don’t be so sure that a life insurance policy (which your kesuba basically is) is not an asmachta.

This really scares me OP and here's why. I don't consider what you and DH are doing to be against halacha, however when you start going after the couple that got your date and the menahel himself personally (for the crime of being the only partner of the hall who actually picks up the phone and talks to you) I feel you skirt the border of doing things that while technically are in the boundaries of halacha are not very nice and are not within the spirit of the law.

You keep mentioning your husband has so many friends who are dayanim and in the court. This makes me me even more nervous because how can anybody expect a fair diyun against you when you are buddy buddy with all the dayanim or people who know the daynim and you are even presenting your case in advance to people who are close to the court and dayanim.

Here's where the part that scares me comes in. There are many things within the boundaries of halacha that a husband who wants to torture his wife but not give her a divorce can go do. He can go even further if he is learned and has "friends" who are dayanim and is chummy with practically all of the halachic deciders in Jeruslam as you make your DH out to be. So now your husband is showing a tendency to do these things with the the other balaii simcha and with hall and he is using the example of kesbuah to justify himself? I wish you many, many happy years of marriage because I am really afraid what would be if you ended up in a divorce situation. If I heard this story I probably would not want to be mishadach with you because I would worry that you would go after my kid if they insulted you in some way by accident and make life a living hell.

I feel the hall is being unreasonable by not giving a portion of your downpayment back after they recouped some costs by renting the hall to another party. However that does not justify any and all means to get back at them. I guess what I am saying is that sometimes things are within the bounds of halacha but I would not go so far as to invoke them because I feel they are not nice, make you seem bitter and turn you into a person who always has to be right and will go to extreme measures to ensure they are always right and never getting even a tiny less than they deserve (middos which btw, often lead to broken marriages and engagements even when it is the in laws and not the couples themselves who have them). I might have taken the hall to beit din to try and get part of my deposit back after the cost to the hall of extra adds, time spent with me etc. was subtracted. I would not have dragged tried to drag the people who got my cancelled date or the menahel personally into this. If that means I got a little taken advantage of and money is tight and my DD won't have as glamorous a wedding as she would like, so be it. At least I will still feel like a nice person at the end of the day.