A number of news websites last night posted about something that happened with a well known Israeli personality. All the sites have since removed their articles on this matter (one explained they had been asked to and even though he report was allowed legally and halachically they decided to agree to remove it), so in this post I am not going to name the person (if someone posts it in the comments I will not remove it), because the post is not about him.
A well known Israeli performer has been in a bad relationship for a while and it has been fairly public. About a year ago this couple split up and it was messy and in the news a lot, at the time.
It seems that she has been refusing to accept a divorce, turning him into an agun - a chained husband. I don't know if she was making demands he wouldn't or couldn't acquiesce to, or if she was just flat out refusing. Ether way, he was stuck.
The news reports can still be found in some places, sans the names of the involved parties. Beis Din decided to give her the status as a "get refuser" and thus enacted the "hetter mea rabbonim" to allow him to remarry even without divorcing his wife first. She is, obviously, shocked and opposed to this and has protested the decision (beis din responded she has the right to appeal to the Beis Din Hagadol in Yerushalayim) and calls it bigamy. The truth is I never understood how the hetter mea rabbonim gets around the bigamy issue in western societies that have laws against bigamy and polygamy. In halacha, sure, but legally in the secular world I do not know how this works. How can he legally get married in Israel if he remains married to his first wife? I don't know, but that's a side point I guess. Maybe it is an explicit exception in the law in Israel, but the question would still remain open in other countries with similar laws.
I am not going to comment on the granting of the hetter mea rabbonim. I know so little about the case, nothing about the psak beside for the headline summary and almost nothing about the details of the dispute, that it would be inappropriate to comment on that - beyond my assumption that beis din judged fairly and honestly and surely went through all the possibilities before settling on this as the viable solution.
What I will comment on is the sad state of affairs that in just a year or so this dispute could end up with a hetter mea rabbonim, while so many others continue to drag on for years with no solution in sight or possible. And so many women in a similar situation have no solution at all. I am not going to solve the problem, and some problems don't even necessarily have a solution - many have been trying for a long time, and it is a halachic quandary that has yet to be resolved in a halachically acceptable manner for the masses (individual cases at times do have solutions) (hopefully soon some rabbonim will find an acceptable solution), but I can commiserate and lament the ease of implementation of a solution for men and the difficulty of having any solution for women.
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