Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia
Married a girl that was not divorced from previous marriages!
I met a girl in 1988 and married her in Virginia at a Justice of the Peace. I found out she was married to someone else afterwards. (She lied on the marriage certificate). So then she got divorced from that person and we married again, this time in North Carolina. Afterwards I found out she was married to 'another' person in Florida. (She lied on the marriage certificate again). Do any of these marriages count?
A few years later, I met a girl from Canada, and she wanted to come live with me in the US. She got stopped at the airport in Florida and told to return to Canada. I married her in Ft. Lauderdale, and she told them on the marriage certificate that it was her 1st marriage, when in fact it was her 2nd marriage, but she was however; divorced. Did this marriage count? ( I never consummated the relationship)
4 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Married a girl that was not divorced from previous marriages!
If you are asking whether you are "free" to enter into a legal marriage in the state of Maryland, the answer is NO. I offer that the same answer would apply in other states as well. You need to think about what you want to do before you move forward with nuptial plans. Until you clear up this matter you risk a potential bigamy charge.
Re: Married a girl that was not divorced from previous marriages!
You present an interesting history. The short answer to your question is that a person can't be married to another person who is already married. Therefore, when you married in
Virginia, it was obviously invalid. However, when you remarried this woman in NC, that might have been legal if her "marriage" to the second person in FL occurred while she was still married to the first person in FL. If so, that second marriage was invalid, so when she divorced the first guy before remarrying you, your NC marriage would be valid. If so, unless you divorced her, your "marriage" to the Canadian letter is similarly invalid. Of course, if the FL lady got remarried to the second FL man after divorcing the first FL man and before she married you, your NC marriage was also invalid.
Re: Married a girl that was not divorced from previous marriages!
Count for what? If you're asking whether you're now carrying any legally adverse baggage due to these various void to voidable marriage relationships in which you've been involved, the answer is quite, probably, yes.
Re: Married a girl that was not divorced from previous marriages!
I am not going to try to untangle all of these valid and invalid marriages. Obviously your marriage to an already married woman was void from the beginning, but it was still on the books and should have been annulled before any other weddings took place. A divorce may itself be invalid where a real marriage never occurred, although the history you describe is so rare that the courts may never have had the opportunity to rule on the issue.
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