American Divorce

[PurpleParis]

Can anyone help with some advice about my partner gettin g divorced from his Amercian wife? He married her in the mid 90's in America, as he lived there for 15 years. He left (because of circumstances caused by her, he could not live with) and came back to England in 2001. We have no idea where she is living, but do have a fair idea of where she is working. We need to do this as cost effectively as possible and hopefully the sooner the better but have no idea how to go about this. We do have a copy of his marriage certificate though!

[Stu Dent]

I can possibly help you.

Can you tell me where the marriage was registerd - i.e what state?

Family Law in the U.S. differs from state-to-state. In all probability this will not be inexpensive to resolve. It is likely to require the assistance of a UK solicitor to liase with a US Attorney within the relevant state.

[PurpleParis]

Thank you Stu, the marriage took place at Lake Tahoe, Nevada although they lived in Ohio and that is where he left from to come back to the UK.

[Stu Dent]

I am afraid this looks like it could be a costly exercise. Your parter can file for divorce in either the state of Nevada or Ohio. That's the easy bit. So too is the process of commencing the action. You would still require the services of an Attorney however, and probably a solicitor from the UK too.

But what complicates your partners case is that he is not resident in either state, and both states have a residency requirement where the party filing for divorce must be resident in the state for a period of 6 weeks before beginning the divorce action.

So it seems that the solution is move to Ohio or Nevada or, more logically, your partner should try to make contact with his wife and ask her to divorce him (perhaps at his expense)? He may wish to write to the company she works for leaving his contact details so he can be contacted on a personal matter. It's either that or use a private detective to make contact.

I don't think it would even help to take an extended holiday since I think that would fall short of what would be required to constitute what being 'resident' is - suggesting a degree of permanency.

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-125.html#NR S125Sec010 (Check the first two sections - NRS 125.020 -section 2).

http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3105 - (see 3105.62).

[PurpleParis]

Thank you, once again Stu, for being so concise, it does look like we're in for a testing time!