Legal Question in Family Law in California

Re: unable to locate husband

It is possible to divorce your spouse without having knowledge of their whereabouts. In starting a divorce/dissolution of marriage process, you need to file a petition. After filing the petition, you would need to serve it (alongs with a summons) on your spouse, giving notice of the proceeding. Now, if you are unable to find your spouse, you can publish the divorce summons in a newspaper. You first must convince the Court you have made every effort to locate your spouse. This means that if you have an e-mail address for him or some other mode of contact, you may need to exhaust that. Howeve, the Judge will then decide if you have made all efforts and if you have, will issue an order for publication. Since the order will name a specific newspaper in which to publish, you will need to select the paper for publication in advance.

Once the order is signed by the judge, the order will need to be forwarded to the newspaper of your choice with the payment for the publication. Generally, the summons is published for four consecutive weeks.

After four weeks, the newspaper will send you a proof of publication for you to present to the court. The clock starts ticking the 28th day from day one of publication and the divorce can be final in six months from that date.

I hope that helps. -K. Thomas