[jodyroll]

Friends of mine (Dominican husband, Foreign wife) were married about 5 years ago, and he has been here for four of them. They were a really great couple. He had a post-secondary education, a good job in the DR, owned land, had a bank account, etc. She also had a post-secondary education, a good job, and owned land in her homeland. They each had children from a previous marriage. He wasn’t at all sankie-ish and not particularly macho as in he pitched in with the housework and cooking, etc. They were getting along just fine with the exception of some problems that they were having with one of his kids (lying, stealing, causing problems in school, and trying to cause problems between the husband and wife, etc.). The problems were a result of the child not adapting well to the new culture. They felt that because they loved each other and were so compatible, they could work through it. And they were.

He was adapting well, working at a job that was not in his field and taking English so that one day he could get a job in his field. It helped that she had lived in the DR for a while before they married, so she understood some of the complexities of the culture and had prepared him of the cultural differences before hand. She had insisted that he visit her country prior to accepting his proposal to ensure that he knew what he was getting into and could tolerate the climate and the cultural differences. She had also tried to teach him everything he needed to know early on so that he didn’t feel dependent on her. He knew the transit system and got his learners permit within weeks of landing here. He could do all his own banking, she had found him a Spanish speaking doctor, found him some other Dominicans in town to socialize with, and enrolled the children in a Spanish school so that he could communicate with the teachers without needing her to translate (and also so that the children would not loose their Spanish or be set back academically).

Then one day after they had been married about 4 ½ years, while she was gathering up some stuff to put into the safety deposit box at the bank, she came across two sets of divorce papers between her husband and the children’s mother, dated about four years apart. The more recent set was dated several months AFTER she married her husband. When she asked him about them, he told her that the ones with the earlier date were phony. He had paid some shady lawyer in the DR to prepare them when he didn’t have any divorce papers to submit with his immigration application! No divorce papers to submit several months AFTER he married her…. He had told her that he was divorced. His family and friends had said the same. Even his ex-wife had confirmed it.

She asked him what papers he had provided to apply for their marriage license, and he said he claimed that he had never been married because he had no divorce papers to provide. In doing that, he lied on a Statuatory Declaration which is a crime. So she asked him if he had, in fact, been divorced when he married her. He admitted that he hadn’t. But he had obtained the divorce after he married my friend and then planned a second ceremony… a blessing ceremony in the Catholic Church in the DR. (The wedding had been a civil ceremony in her country.) Unbeknownst to her, he had arranged for the ceremony to be another marriage ceremony rather than a blessing ceremony, and thus tricked her into marrying him again. However, in the DR one must wait 60 days after a divorce to remarry, and he waited less than 2 weeks.

So the first marriage is not valid, and the second one isn’t either… because he tricked her and committed fraud against her and because he didn’t wait the 60 days after the real divorce from his ex-wife. He also committed fraud against her government when he submitted false papers for the purposes of immigration.

My friend was devastated.

The entire foundation of their relationship was based on honesty and trust. And it crumbled. She sought legal opinions regarding their legal marital status and several lawyers advised that they were not legally married. His response was that they should simply go and get married again, and he was taken aback when she didn’t immediately agree. There was a bit of a trust issue… He eventually moved out (recently) but not until he had put her through hell for several months.

She is torn between just wanting out and wanting to get some marriage counseling and see if they can get past this or not. After all, she believed in her vows when she took them (for better or worse, etc.) However, that was when she still trusted him. They can’t get a divorce, because they aren’t legally married, and annulments are almost impossible to get and very expensive. (One estimate was a minimum of $100,000 with no guarantee of success.) She would also need someone not related to her and who speaks English to collect the documents in the DR for her lawyer. He won’t agree to an annulment because he still maintains that they are married in the eyes of God and so “there is no problem”. He thinks that she is blowing the whole thing out of the water. He doesn’t think that he has done anything wrong and still professes his undying love for her.

As I indicated above, they don’t qualify for a divorce, and so the Matrimonial Property Act does not apply. Ergo, he is not going to get half of everything she has. He is not going to get anything, between the pre-nuptial agreement that they had and the fact that only Common Law applies. The couple has some debt and he refuses to accept that half of it is his (when in reality most of it is). He has about $50k in the bank (including the RRSP she set up for him) and she is now forced to live pay cheque to pay cheque because she is servicing the debt load on her own to safeguard her credit rating. But, he is getting some bad advice from friends who don’t know the whole story and keep telling him to divorce her and take half of everything that she has.

Can anyone tell me how it all goes so wrong?