Legal Question in Family Law in California
my daughters husband and his wife separated almost ten years ago, but niether of them filed for a divorce. they lived in washington state and when they split up he came back to california and she stayed in washington both providing for themselves the entire time. out of the blue his wife served him with divorce papers and is now asking for $1000 a month for alimony. He has had no contact with his wife after the intial split til now. and in this time he met my daughter and he has been the sole provider for and thier 2 small boys. there is no way he can still provide for his now family and pay any kind of alimony to her. after all this time she has never asked him for any kind of support but she is asking for alimony. how likely is it that he will have to pay even though it will put him in a hardship and he wont be able to provide for his young boys that are just 8 and 4.
2 Answers from Attorneys
To be clear, he cannot be your daughter’s husband. If your daughter married this guy while still married to person in Washington, he is a bigamist and is committing a crime. He needs to hire an attorney in Washington (I assume that’s where the divorce is filed)
Mr. Green is correct. Your first issue is that your daughter is in a void marriage. California law will likely allow her to assert a putative marriage for property and support purposes, but she needs to consult an attorney right away about an annulment and obtaining immediate orders of support for her and her children. It doesn't have to be adversarial, but you want CA orders in place before anything happens in WA and the orders need to follow the law (finally) instead of just doing things outside the law. Heck, if they love each other and want to stay together, they can get remarried after the annulment, but she needs to get CA court orders pronto that he can file with his WA responses to show his obligations.
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