daf bit: Bava Batra 167

[cellio]

The mishna teaches: a letter of divorce may be written for a husband though his wife is not present, and a receipt (for same) may be written for a wife though her husband is not present, so long as they are known. The g'mara clarifies that the document contains the name of the person in question -- a bill of divorce contains the name of the husband (who is issuing it), not the wife, and his name must be known to the scribe and witnesses. The rabbis then ask how such a document could be valid; if there are two Yosef ben Shimons in town and the wife is not present, there is a risk that the document could be delivered to the wrong man's wife! R. Aha ben Huna resolved this in the name of Rav: in a town with two men of the same name, neither one may divorce his wife except in the presence of the other. (167a-b)

(The g'mara does not here discuss the possibility of the scribe disambiguating in the the document, e.g. the Yosef ben Shimon who is taller, or who is a baker, or whatever. Perhaps this means that the two men must go together to the divorcing one's wife? But the g'mara elsewhere allows agents to deliver the document (presumably the source of the potential confusion on names), so that's probably not it. What is gained by having both Yosefs show up while scribes write a divorce document for one of them?)

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

I assume that having both men there means that everyone will be careful to distinguish them, seeing them right there together, and there will be ways of confirming that the correct wife gets the document. Perhaps now making sure that if there were two people with the exact same name in town, there were photos of all of them would nowadays be sufficient?

[cellio]

Good point -- maybe it's enough to bring them together to remind everyone to be careful.

Today maybe they'd use some unique ID like SSN?

[magid.livejournal.com]

I think unique IDs would likely work also.
Of course, IANAR.