California Family Law Report

Case of the Month (from CFLR Monthly)

Void marriage is invalid from its inception regardless of whether trial court declares it void . . .

In reversal, Third District holds that trial court erred by ordering wife’s marriage to her third husband annulled as bigamous because that ruling was based on a marriage that was void under Nevada and California law

Patricia Seaton married her first husband, Richard, in November 1973. They separated in January 1987, and Patricia began dating Henry. In January 1988, Patricia, then working as a legal secretary, met law student intern, Jeffrey Seaton and broke up with Henry. Jeffrey was married, but soon separated from his wife “to pursue a relationship” with Patricia. Henry, however, wasn’t about to go quietly; he kept sending Patricia gifts and contacting her at home and work. Faced with this, Patricia, helped by Jeffrey, got a restraining order against Henry in May 1988.

According to Patricia, when Henry was served with the restraining order, he called her, threatening to come to her house and saying he could “take care of [her],” before the police could get there. Fearing for her children’s safety, she agreed to meet with Henry somewhere else. When Patricia, who brought her sister along, arrived at the meeting place, Henry sweet-talked her into having dinner with him in Reno. The three of them got to Reno in the early afternoon, ate at a buffet, and began drinking. “Several shots of tequila later,” Patricia and Henry were married in a Reno wedding chapel. The couple and Patricia’s sister, stayed overnight at a Reno hotel and returned to Sacramento the following day.

Back in Sacramento, Patricia began calling Reno family law attorneys. Although it was Memorial Day, she was able to reach one, who spent 40 minutes talking to her, advised her that her marriage to Henry was void because she was still married to Richard, and told her to “ ‘double-check’ ” his advice just to be sure he was right. As Patricia remembered it, she and Jeffrey went to the law library at McGeorge School of Law to verify the attorney’s advice, after which Jeffrey “confirmed that the marriage was void” and that she need not take any further action. Patricia and Richard were ultimately divorced in December 1988. Jeffrey divorced his wife in April 1991 and married Patricia in June.

In November 2008, Jeffrey filed for a legal separation; Patricia countered with a disso request. Jeffrey then obtained permission to amend his petition to one for an annulment, based on Patricia’s prior marriage to Henry. According to him, he never went to McGeorge with Patricia and didn’t know about her marriage to Henry until he found their wedding picture sometime in 1989. Jeffrey maintained that he told Patricia to get that marriage annulled, and she later told him that she had taken care of it. In his supporting declaration, Jeffrey stated that when he tried to find a judgment annulling or dissolving Patricia and Henry’s marriage, he found only a draft summons and petition for annulment prepared in 1991, but never filed.

At trial, Dirk Amara, the attorney whose name was on the draft summons and petition, testified that they appeared to have been prepared by his office, but he didn’t recognize either Patricia or Jeffrey. Both parties disavowed any knowledge of those pleadings. When the trial concluded, the court found that Patricia’s marriage to Henry was void because she was still married to Richard, but that under Nevada law, an annulment was necessary to legally sever the relationship. Therefore, Patricia was still legally attached to Henry when she attempted to marry Jeffrey. Accordingly, the trial court concluded that Patricia and Jeffrey’s marriage was void and ordered it annulled. In addition, the court found that it lacked jurisdiction to declare Patricia’s marriage to Henry void, and that Patricia could not qualify as a putative spouse because she could not reasonably have a good faith belief that her marriage to Jeffrey was valid. Moreover, the court found her credibility suspect and her description of the events “ ‘difficult to believe.’ ” The court reasoned that the draft documents were evidence “ ‘that someone knew that the [Henry] marriage had to be addressed,’ ” and whether that someone was Jeffrey or Patricia it cast suspicion on the validity of Patricia’s testimony. In addition, the court didn’t think that either her signature or her sister’s on the marriage license application “appeared to be the signature of an extremely intoxicated person.”

Patricia appealed, and the Third District reversed.

Looking into the void . . .
The justices began by explaining that, under Fam C §2201(a)(1), a bigamous marriage is “ ‘illegal and void from the beginning,’ ” does not require a court order to establish its invalidity, and may be shown to be invalid in a collateral proceeding. However, they continued, in order to determine whether Patricia and Jeffrey’s marriage was void, they first had to determine whether she was still married to Henry under Nevada law when it occurred. The panel noted that under Nevada N.R.S. §125.290, “a marriage is ‘void without any decree of divorce or annulment or other legal proceedings’ ” if it takes place when either of the parties has a living spouse. The justices also noted that the trial court had relied on the Nevada Supreme Court case, Williams v. Williams (2004) 120 Nev. 559, 97 P.3d 1124, in which that court said that although a bigamous marriage is void, the marital status is not severed without an annulment. Patricia urged them to find that this statement was dicta that should be disregarded and instead, to be guided by the provisions of the statute itself. The panel agreed that the statement was dicta, finding that neither of the parties in that case had argued that the marriage was not void and that the case primarily dealt with the putative spouse doctrine and its effect on the division of the parties’ property. Therefore, the statement “was unnecessary to the determination of the questions involved in the case,” and was “not controlling.”

Coulda, shoulda, woulda . . .
Patricia also argued that the trial court did not lack jurisdiction to determine that her marriage to Henry was void, and the panel agreed with that too. As they had previously pointed out, the invalidity of a void marriage, such as Patricia’s to Henry, “may be shown collaterally in any proceeding in which the fact of marriage may be material.” Since the invalidity of that marriage was clearly material in this case, the trial court could have made a determination of the issue. Summing up, the justices concluded that Patricia’s marriage to Henry was invalid. However, that did not end the discussion. The next step was to determine whether Patricia could use that invalidity as a defense to Jeffrey’s request for an annulment of their marriage. That was necessary, the justices said, because that determination involves the legal fiction that a void marriage never existed, which may be used to promote substantial justice between the parties, but not where the rights of third parties or children are involved. The panel recognized that, according to the trial court, Patricia should not be allowed to benefit from her misrepresentations of fact and her dubious credibility. However, they believed that the legal fiction could apply here because it was in line with what Patricia had consistently told Jeffrey about her marriage to Henry and with his belief for more than seventeen years of marriage. Accordingly, the panel held that Patricia’s marriage to Jeffrey was valid because her marriage to Henry was void from its inception and she was not legally married to Henry when she married Jeffrey. Given that, the panel found it unnecessary to address Patricia’s other contentions, and they reversed the trial court’s judgment of nullity.