This blog post is a transcription of video where we discussed issues where people are attempting to complete their own California divorce.  They think they are divorced and re-marry, only to learn several years later, and after already re-marrying, that they are not divorced from their first spouse.  You can read the transcript or watch the video below.

Hi, this is Tim Blankenship with divorce 661.com and today we are talking about what to do  If you become remarried and then find out later that your divorce from your previous marriage was never completed. My name is Tim Blankenship I’m a licensed and bonded legal document preparation service and we specialize in California divorce and let’s get right into it.

So I have had several cases just this week alone, where I received a phone call and the party on the phone told me that they thought they completed their divorce many years ago and have remarried and have now discovered that there divorce was never finalized   So I wanted to address a couple of issues and why this is happening in and give you a way of how you can fix this and talk about a little bit of the Rules of Court in regards to you what you need to do and if you’re breaking the law and things like that.

So let’s first talk about these particular cases and you’ll probably find that you’re  having similar trouble.  On this first case, the gal called me. She  thought she had divorced over 10 years ago she went to get remarried and they did it just through are usually went to the county got remarried of it that they want to have a church ceremony.
The church  asked them for a copy of the divorce decree. So they sent a letter to the court and asked for a copy of their divorce judgment and received a letter saying we see you filed for divorce, but no judgment has been entered. So she was shocked to learn that her divorce was not finalized. She thought that she had done and taken all the steps and completed the divorce case and that she was legally remarried. So what were doing with her is we have to complete her divorce 10 years after the fact, even though she’s been legally married for for this period of time.

The next one is is pretty similar, except in this case, as this was where the party was trying to file a default got the default approved and thought the default meant that the that judgment was entered, and what this boils down to is when parties are representing themselves, and that was the case in both of these instances the these parties represent themselves. They did not have attorneys which is totally fine, except for the fact that when you’re you go a completely alone, without assistance from say a company like us. These are the issues and  you will have problems like this.

What you need to do is you should use a service like ours to begin with just to avoid these types of problems. But here’s what we had to do on and are doing currently in these particular cases. When we check the court website and we sent our courrier down to get copies of what it been done. We realize that very little of the case in both of these instances have been done.  All they had done was filed the initial petition, served the petition on the other party and that was literally it that’s all they did so, how they thought that they were divorced is beyond me because there was no judgment entered.

We see these types of problems all the time. So here’s we’ll actually be doing. We have to basically picked up where they left off and complete the process. Fortunately, in both these cases the other party didn’t file a response. The reason that’s important is because if these parties had if the other party filed a response in either of these cases, we would have to track them down as they would have to be involved in the case because they filed a response.

One of these cases was 18 years ago I was interested to look at the paperwork  and it looked like at the court forms look like that long ago.  This one was 18 years ago – she thought she had been divorce. They had a child together. The child turned 18. They thought the divorce was finalized and it wasn’t so we have to go back and again a response is not filed so we were able to pick up where they left off and do a default case.

And the good news is we don’t have to track down the spouses because of course this much time gone by this they have no idea where the other party lives. So let’s talk about pre-existing marriages. So you’ve gotten remarried. Apparently this is something that’s fairly common where folks think they are divorced but are not.

So the question becomes am I legally married. That’s a good question. I looked up and a little research there is a something called prior existing marriage. So for instance this though the lady in my office yesterday. She says number one, Am I still legally married?  And number two, you know, this does not mean my husband is not my husband. My current husband?

So I told her she’s probably currently married, but I told her, and somewhat jokingly, that, but her husband knew her current husband has a way of divorcing her, because there is a pre-existing marriage as looking it up on the on the divorce forms in California. When you file for divorce. One of the options to choose is to say I want to nullify the marriage the voidable marriage because of a pre-existing marriage that you were not aware of.

So if your husband was not aware you were  previously married and you now find out you have cause for divorce if that’s if you’re looking for a way out, exposed, but that both the spouses and have been you there get shaped we said this jokingly, of course, to get to the process for them wrap things up and finish the case of this is the reason I want to get this video out here and do this right, this blog post on this issue is because obviously there’s a lot of this going around.

The court procedures are very confusing, people don’t know what forms to do with and they think their divorced and are not they’re getting remarried there having children with their new husbands and this can run into all kinds of other problems with that as to whose child is. Is the child presumed to be the new husbands or the previous husbands child.

So it brings up a couple of this interesting topics, but really what I want to get out there is you really need to get assistance with your divorce from the get-go. You need to have either an attorney or if you are looking for a more cost effective approach. You can use a service like ours.  We are a legal document preparation service. We only specialize in divorce in California. We handle divorce cases all across California.

So we recommend you use our service from the beginning. If you have we watching this video, but if you find yourself in this particular situation. I just know we can help you give us a call. We need to track down your case number, see where left off and let you know the steps we need to take to finish the divorce case for you.

My name is Tim Blankenship divorce661.com is our website. Please call me if you need assistance with their divorce number 661-281-0266, and as always, thanks for watching.