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Since the girls use my last name and the fact they had a different birth father is unknown in our community and we don’t know if their late father had remarried or had children before he died, it’s a heads up for the Schadchan if the potential bochur has their birth father’s last name possible relationship needs to be checked out.
It is important to know how long ago the parents divorced, how old was the child, are parents now married to someone else, was the child raised in shared or sole custody and was/is there contact with the divorced parent and his/her family?
My current wife and I both are divorced from our first spouses.
I had no children with wife number one. She asked for a divorce after two years of marriage to return to the country of her birth to care for an ill parent. I could not get a work visa for that country and we could not get visas to mover her parents here.
My wife was divorced by her first husband after 4 years of marriage. Her ex decided he wanted to see the world and shouldn’t have married right out of Yeshiva. My wife got sole custody of their one and three year old girls. They never saw the father again (in fact he died a few years after the divorce in a car accident) his parents and sibling are long dead as well. The girls had no contact with paternal relatives.
I married her before the girls were two and five and now fifteen years later the girls know no other parents, but our happy nuclear family. There are no 1/2 siblings. They have no real memory of a father other than myself and there is no reason that these early divorces should affect a shidduch. I adopted the girls legally before they turned 6 and they have my last name.
It is not common knowledge in our community that my wife and I are previously divorced, BUT I disclose it to the shadchan for purposes of avoiding mamzeros issues only.
Know all the details before you make a blanket statement about disqaulifying children of a divorce from marriage consideration.
M