Obligation to ask the husband about canceling an agreement between two friends
Question
Hello.
A caregiver in a family daycare asked her friend to come replace her for a few hours because she needed to go out to a doctor. Afterwards, the doctor canceled the appointment, and the caregiver wanted to cancel the arrangement with the friend. The friend, for her part, agreed, and said that from the outset she had not been interested in going out, and that everything she had agreed to was only because her husband wanted her to work; and her husband still does not agree that she cancel. Is it necessary to ask his opinion?
Answer
Hello and blessings.
There is no obligation to ask the husband.
Source
Even if the agreement had been made with the husband himself, there are several reasons on account of which it can be canceled: 1. The friend did not begin the work (333:1). 2. This is not a case of davar ha’aved, because the friend did not receive another offer that she turned down because of the first offer (ibid.). 3. Even if it were a case of davar ha’aved, there is an implied condition here, since she agreed on the understanding that she was going out to the doctor, and these are matters that are in his heart and in the heart of every person—that if the doctor cancels, she will cancel the substitute (like a person who sells with the intent to ascend to Eretz Yisrael, siman 207, se’if 3). And even if it were to be suggested that none of these reasons for exemption applied here, the husband is not an interested party with standing, for although a wife’s earnings belong to her husband, nevertheless, before she has worked, he has no acquisition in what she is going to work. (Editor’s note: Perhaps this depends on the dispute between the Shulchan Aruch and the Rema in Even HaEzer siman 81 as to whether a person can consecrate his wife’s earnings.)
