Marriage in USA

[coccinelle]

If two UK residents get married in the States, what happens if one day they want to divorce? Do they have to go to the States? what happens??

[dotty.]

'If you have married abroad and now wish to divorce then you can apply for a divorce in England/Wales but you must have been domiciled or habitually resident in England or Wales for one year to apply for a divorce.'
http://www.armchairad...ing/legal/divorce.asp

[coccinelle]

Thank you dotty, I couldn't find anything.

[Andyvon]

Why do people do this?

I owned a chauffeur company for 12 years (and we averaged 10 weddings a week in season). I never remember a client or customer who knew of a marriage abroad that ever worked. I remember all those dreamy brides and grooms off to weddings on beaches in the Caribbean, Africa etc - but they never seemed to last more than a year or two! We always thought maybe the reality of daily life in the UK was such an anticlimax that it destroyed their dreams and they fell off their pink clouds.

The only people with successful marriages seem to be those more realistic people who just have a low-key wedding in the UK.

[spudqueen]

Yep - my brother and his first wife got married in Florida. (They divorced in the UK). Maybe he has more chance with his second marriage as the wedding was held in the UK!

[NoMercy]

How can the success of a marriage be attributed to the location where the nuptials took place?

[Andyvon]

I don't know NoM. All I can say is that I had so many customers over the years. I can't remember anyone who had - or knew of - someone who had a foreign wedding and was still together. We heard about these weddings from our customers, but they always seemed to collapse very quickly. As I mentioned above, my customers, chauffeurs and I used to talk about this a lot. The general concensus was that weddings at exotic foreign locations were a touch of paradise. Then the couple have to come home and they are brought back to reality with a bump and suddenly realise married life isn't the paradise they thought. Then you hear the comments after just a few months that "It didn't work".

All the successful marriages we knew - and I know now - were down-to-Earth weddings in the local church or Registry Office. The couple then go home, are realistic and don't have such high expectations of married life being some sort of paradise. As almost anyone in a successful marriage will say, marriage is wonderful, but it's not easy. It has to be worked at and it's not a paradise. But what is?