Q: Reuven had a din Torah with Shimon, and beis din ruled that Shimon owed Reuven $150,000. Shimon was avoiding paying Reuven, however, claiming that he didn’t have the money. One day, Reuven approached Shimon and told him that he had just heard about a great business venture, but he needed capital to invest, and if Shimon would pay him 30 cents on the dollar, he would write him a contract forgiving the rest of the debt.
Shimon agreed immediately and paid 30 cents on the dollar, after which he received the contract Reuven had promised him.
Shimon was shocked when just a short time later, he received a summons to beis din. At the subsequent hearing in beis din, Reuven claimed that he had never really forgiven the debt; he had signed that contract only in a desperate attempt to recover at least some of the money owed to him.
Does Reuven have a valid claim to the rest of the money?
A: Before we address this question, we must preface by establishing that Shimon’s evading Reuven was categorically forbidden (Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 12:6).
We must consider, however, whether Reuven having signed the contract forgiving the rest of the debt absolves Shimon of having to pay the rest of the debt.
There is a complex concept called modaah (lit. declaration; in our context, it is a declaration that something will be done against someone’s will) that involves myriad halachos, several of which are relevant to our case.
If someone coerced another person (whether by threat of physical violence or by threat of monetary harm) to sell him an object, that sale is final, because the presumption is that because the seller wants to avert that threat and he is being paid for the object, he agrees to the sale unless he made a declaration beforehand, in a very specific manner, called mesiras modaah (ibid. 205:1).
In contrast, if someone is forced to give something as a gift, then because the victim of the coercion did not receive any benefit (i.e., in the form of money), then if it is established that he was coerced and did not want to give the gift — even if he didn’t declare that he was coerced — the transfer of the “gift” is null and void (ibid. 205:1–2; 242:1).
A person who is coerced to forgive a debt is akin to someone who is coerced to give a gift (ibid. 205:2–3).
The Poskim deliberate regarding a person who is forced to “compromise” on a payment due to him: Is this transaction considered akin to a sale, in which case it is considered final, or is it considered akin to a gift, which is invalid (ibid. 12:11; 205:3)?
Logic dictates that it is similar to a sale, because a compromise is reached when the plaintiff claims that he is owed a certain amount and the defendant denies that claim. Each side then “forgoes” some of his claim in exchange for the other person forgoing some of his claim — just as in a sale, the seller gives away his object in exchange for the buyer’s money (Sma 205:9).
But many Poskim say that this applies only to a compromise reached as a result of an uncertainty; because each side is concerned that if he does not agree to a compromise, he will end up with nothing, because he might lose the din Torah, he is willing to “buy out” the other person and forgo his own claims. In such a case, he cannot nullify the compromise unless he informed the witnesses beforehand that he was being coerced. But if the claim is baseless, that is akin to his being forced to give a gift, and even if he didn’t declare to the witnesses that he was being coerced, but there are witnesses who can testify that he was — or his counterpart admits that he forced the compromise — the compromise is still void.
Similarly, if a person was forced to compromise because his counterpart is denying his claims and he feels that if he doesn’t compromise, he will end up losing everything, it is not considered as though he received money from his counterpart but rather as though that person returned part of the money he stole, which is akin to a gift, and the compromise is void (Shaar Mishpat 12:5; Ketzos 205:2; Nesivos 205:9; see Pischei Teshuvah ibid. 5).
In our case, Shimon claimed that he had no money to repay Reuven. If that was a lie, and he actually had money — even if only some of the amount, which he would have been obligated to pay — then the compromise Reuven agreed to was coerced, and his forgiveness of the rest of the debt is void. But if Shimon truly had no money, which meant that he was not obligated to pay at that time, but in order to reach the compromise, he urgently gathered the amount necessary to pay the 30 cents on the dollar, then the compromise stands. This is not a case in which a modaah would invalidate the compromise, because a basic tenet of modaah is that the witnesses must know that something was done against Halachah, and here Shimon was not halachically obligated to pay money he didn’t have (see Be’eir Heiteiv 205:5).
