Legal Question in Family Law in California
Validity of "Marriage" in CA
In 1986 when I was having multiple problems, my then-girlfriend and I obtained a confidential license in San Bernardino County. There was a private ceremony performed by her parents, whose ordination is questionable. (Both are now dead and the two-person ministry that ordained them is defunct as of 1990).
Following the ceremony, I worked out of state for two months, and assumed the certificate had been filed. The parents refused to give me a copy. We split up in 1993 and I discovered that she had been drawing welfare on the sly the entire time. I have not seen or heard of her since; I don't even know if she is in the state. The clerk's office has been unable to locate any record of a filing (the parents claimed to have changed the date and filed it later).
I have successfully changed my life; I am now a professional and approaching my master's degree. My question is: in California, does the fact of a ceremony make the marriage legal without a certificate?
2 Answers from Attorneys
County Clerk's Office
In California, as in many states, there are two distinct aspects of marriage, legal state requirements, which must be met, and a person's religious affiliations. Your case is unique in that you are not trying to prove the legal validity of your marriage through a cermony.
What you need to do is write the County Clerk in the county where you married. The county should have a cerfiticate on file regarding your marriage. This acknowledges your legal marriage. The minister performing your marriage is required by law to submit this document. If no such document exists, and you resided only in California and did not visit a common law state, representing yourself as husband and wife, you may find your "marriage" invalid for California has refused to recognize common law marriages. If such is the case, everything is governed by contract law, i.e. Marvin v Marvin.
Re: Validity of
Wow! What an amazing question! The answer of what to do depends on your comfort level with not knowing if you're divorced or not.
Most states (I have not specificially researched CA law on this--let's just say your situation is unusual) have a "validating statute" which means that quasi-legal marriages become legal if you think they are. Example: Rev. Fred Flintstone represents to you that he's an ordained minister and performs your wedding ceremony. Later you find out that Rev. Flintstone is not really a minister. Because you believed at the time you were legally married, a validating statute makes you legally married. If CA has such a statute, because you lived as husband and wife for 7 years you'd probably fall under that statuted. Again, I haven't done the specific research for CA. Many states have such a statute.
By the same token, the certificate is what makes it legal. If there's no certificate, there's no marriage.
How comfortable are you with this set of facts? You may want to seek the advice of a local attorney who'd be willing to do the necessary research on the law & the certificate filing (what if it's filed in the wrong county? or they've misspelled your name?) before you go getting married again or assume that your assets aren't community property. An annulment might not be the worst investment in the world, under the circumstances.
You definitely win the prize for interesting question of the month--not that this is any comfort!
Best wishes,
Diana Mercer
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