What if you were never really married to the guy with whom you walked down the aisle, and the one you share a house with or have children with? What if you never really got divorced from the lunk you thought you left in the dust? It’s hard to imagine, but it is more common than you think.
The stories that follow are true and involve women who believed they were married or divorced but found the opposite to be true. Learn how to avoid their pitfalls.
Shelley was preparing for her fourth wedding by having a pre-nup prepared by an attorney. Shelley had three grown children from her previous marriages, which had all ended in divorce. In her preparation of the pre-nup, the attorney asked to see the final judgments of dissolution from her three divorces. (The judgment is signed by a judge and states the terms of a divorce and pronounces the divorce final.) Shelley went back through her records and could only find the judgments from her second and third marriages. Shelley then remembered she had gone to a paralegal service to do her first divorce. She had signed all of the papers but never heard from the paralegal service again. She eventually moved out of state and just assumed the divorce was final. Inquiring of the county clerk where she used to live she found out the first divorce had never been finalized; this meant her second and third marriages were null and void.
Now, 30 years later, she finds she is still married to her first husband and had never been married to the fathers of her three children.
It sounds far-fetched but consider this: According to the Los Angeles Times, about 80 percent of people in California do their own paperwork for a divorce. It is estimated a third of those divorces have not been finalized because of difficulty understanding the court system. Many people do not understand that until a final order has been issued the divorce is not final and the couples are still considered married.
If a divorce was never finalized then the couple is still legally married and any subsequent marriages are not legal.
In most states, do-it-yourself divorces are very common and definitely doable under certain circumstances. Courts can be tricky to navigate without the help of an attorney. Make sure you keep up with the paper trail, notice and filing requirements, or you may discover that you are not only not divorced but possibly not even married to the person you consider your husband.
A couple travels to Mexico for a fun vacation and a romantic seaside wedding. They find a person who says he can perform a wedding ceremony at a local hotel and as the sun sets over the ocean they are pronounced man and wife. Fifty years later, as the couple organizes their important papers they come across the old marriage license and realize it doesn’t look very official. A few calls to local authorities in Mexico and they find out, in fact, it isn’t a valid marriage license. In a panic they go to their local courthouse in the United States and 50 years and two children later, they make the marriage official.
Destination weddings are so popular today this scenario is not as likely to occur as it once was. Many resorts and wedding planners not only plan your wedding but help you to fulfill all of the legal requirements to legally marry in a foreign country.
The trick is to plan ahead. Always check the marriage requirements of a foreign country with the embassy or tourist information bureau within the country. Plan the wedding far enough in advance just in case the laws of the country require you to be a resident for a certain amount of time before the wedding date. Some countries have residency requirements requiring the couple live in the country for up to 40 days prior to getting married.
People often worry a marriage performed out of the country might not be legal within the United States. If a marriage is legal and valid in the country in which it was performed then it is also legal and valid in the United States.
If you are married in a foreign country, the difficulty can sometimes come when asked to show proof you are legally married. If for any reason you are asked to present a certified copy of a marriage certificate in order to prove you are legally married, there may be some difficulty in obtaining a copy depending on the country in which you were married.
Some couples avoid this hassle by getting married at their local courthouse in the U.S. before or following a wedding ceremony in a foreign country.
To find out if you are legally divorced you may call your local county courthouse to check the divorce files. To obtain confirmation of a legal marriage, call your local county clerk to obtain a copy of your marriage certificate.
Keller Smith is an attorney with The Keller Law Firm in Manhattan Beach, California; she can be reached at www.kellerlawfirm.com. She contributes a column once per month.