Legal Question in Family Law in Texas
We married in 2007. Filied for divorce ealry in 2009. We had a staus hearing around may, i think, and at the time i was in jail for four days over a ticket and missed the hearing. He was granted the divorce by default. We got back together, living as husband and wife again with our two children. He told me that he hadnt paid his attorney and that they never submitted a decree for the judge to sign. I called several times the following months, just to check his story and the court clerk told me the same thing. That a decree had never been submitted for the judge to sign, so we were still married. I found out a week ago that he did finalize the divorce in jan of 2010. For two years we have been divorced and he never told anyone.Im in shock and dont even know where to start. Im a stay at home mom of our two kids and was led to believe that we never divorced. I found out the decree was sent to our old address. What do I do? IT says i have supervised visitation.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Wow. I can see how you might be a little thrown by that. I'm curious as to how you found this out now. Are you sure your husband knew about the divorce, or did his attorney maybe just go ahead and file it for him, so it was a surprise to him as well?
You're a month too late to be able to file a bill of review on this (which would basically contest the decree on the grounds that you did not have the opportunity to participate at the hearing and through no fault of your own were unaware that the divorce had been granted at a time when you could have filed a motion for new trial or appealed it). I think it's at least possible that a good argument could be made that despite the divorce, the two of you have had a common-law marriage since whenever it was you got back together, if it's true that everyone including you believed that you were still married. Remarriage would automatically terminate whatever child support obligation you had, though I don't believe it would do the same with the custody/visitation end of things. However, that should have a provision saying that it's subject to agreement of the parties anyway. If everything's okay between the two of you now, there may be a means by which you can ask the court to terminate the SAPCR order (I've never heard of that being done, but I don't see why you couldn't ask for it here).
If things are NOT okay now, though, you're going to need to go back to court and ask for the custody and visitation provisions to be modified, and for a new support order to be put in place consistent with that (if you've been at home with the kids for the last two years, and everything's been okay, it's hard to see how either him having custody or the supervised visitation was appropriate to begin with). You can at the same time ask the court to issue a declaratory judgment as to the issue of whether the two of you now have a common-law marriage, since if you do, and there are now problems, you may need to file for divorce again. Good luck sorting this mess out.
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