California Family Law Report

Party without good-faith belief can’t ride coattails of other party to achieve putative spouse status . . .

Disagreeing with Tejeda, Second District holds that a litigant who seeks putative spouse status must show objective good faith belief in validity of marriage and affirms trial court that denied husband’s request to be designated as putative spouse because he failed to show such a belief

Xiao Hua Sun and Xia Guo met in North Korea in 1997 or 1998. After they became romantically involved, the couple moved to Los Angeles. Sometime later, Sun told Guo that he had a wife in Italy. In January 2001, Sun told his attorney, Tonnie Cheng, that he wanted to divorce his wife. According to Sun, Guo wasn’t there when he met with Cheng, but got together with the attorney later to help with the disso proceedings. Guo would later dispute that and maintain that she did not meet Cheng until much later.

On February 14, 2001, Sun and Guo went to Las Vegas and got married. Guo believed that Sun was free to marry her because he told her that his divorce had gone through. However, for reasons known only to them, the couple stated on their marriage license that their marriage was Sun’s first. Cheng filed Sun’s petition to divorce his wife in Italy on February 15, 2001. The trial court entered a status-only disso judgment ending that marriage on August 21, 2001.

On August 24, 2007, Guo filed for divorce. She followed up on January 7, 2008 with the filing of a petition for annulment, claiming that her marriage to Sun was bigamous. On August 15, 2008, the trial court found that Sun and Guo’s marriage was illegal and void under Fam C §2201(a), which provides that a subsequent marriage to another person is illegal and void unless the prior marriage ended in divorce or annulment, or the prior spouse has been missing for five years or is generally reputed or believed to be dead, because Sun was still married when he purportedly married Guo. Accordingly, the trial court entered a judgment of nullity as to the parties’ marital status, but did not adjudicate the property issues.

After the entry of that judgment, Sun filed a request to be declared a putative spouse. Following a two-day bench trial, the trial court denied his request, finding that Sun lacked an objectively reasonable good faith belief that his prior marriage was dissolved before he purportedly married Guo.

Sun appealed, but the Second District affirmed.

What did he know and when did he know it?
. . .
The justices explained that the putative spouse doctrine is designed to protect an innocent spouse’s rights in an invalid marriage. And, the doctrine is currently codified in Fam C §2251(a), which provides that a trial court which determines that a marriage is void or voidable and finds that either party or both parties had a good faith belief in its validity must designate “the party or parties” as having the status of a putative spouse. The panel noted that in In re Marriage of Vryonis (1988) 202 Cal.App.3d 712, 248 Cal.Rptr. 807, 1988 CFLR 3735, 1988 FA 332 and subsequent cases, courts have defined “good faith” in this context as meaning an objective good faith belief in the validity of the marriage, not a subjective good faith belief. Sun contended that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support the trial court’s finding that he lacked an objective good faith belief in the validity of his marriage to Guo. The justices didn’t agree. The trial court had based its finding on three reasons, they said, all of which reasonably supported it. First, the lower court could reasonably infer from Sun’s false statement on the marriage license (that it was his first marriage) that he knew his divorce from his former wife was not final. Second, the lower court could also reasonably infer that Sun knew his attorney hadn’t yet filed the disso papers, since he’d begun the process only a month before. And third, the trial court could reasonably assume that Sun knew that his attorney could not, of her own volition, grant him a divorce, that obtaining a divorce required a court process begun by filing a petition, and that his attorney would notify him when the court had actually granted the divorce. Besides, the panel found, a reasonable person in Sun’s position would at least have asked his attorney if he was divorced before he married someone else. And, from the timing of the disso filing, the justices suspected that Sun probably did contact Cheng before or after he purportedly married Guo, and Cheng told him that the papers hadn’t been filed yet, but would be filed the next day. Given all that, the panel believed that Sun was either “willfully ignorant of his marital status or he was actually informed that he was still married to his Italian wife . . .” Either way, the justices concluded, the trial court had not erred by concluding that Sun did not have an objectively reasonable good faith belief in the validity of his purported marriage to Guo.

She can’t save him . . .
Sun further contended that even if he didn’t have a good faith belief in the validity of the marriage, Guo’s good faith belief would be enough to entitle him to putative spouse status. He pointed out that the statute says if “either party or both parties believed in good faith . . .” Therefore, he argued, the lower court erred by failing to consider her good faith belief. The panel, however, rejected that argument. The justices noted that giving the statute the interpretation that Sun wanted would make the words “both parties” superfluous, and they were unwilling to assume that the legislature had simply thrown in a superfluous phrase. Moreover, the panel continued, in wording the statute as they had, the solons “retained the common law rule that only an innocent party can seek to be a putative spouse.” In addition, the justices continued, allowing a non-innocent party to ride on the coattails of the innocent party to achieve putative spouse status would be at odds with the intent of the putative spouse doctrine to protect that innocent party and would impermissibly permit the offending party to reap the benefits of that statute. The panel was aware that the appellate court in In re Marriage of Tejeda (2009) 179 Cal.App.4th 973, 101 Cal.Rptr.3d 49, 2010 CFLR 11389, had utilized the interpretation of Fam C §2251(a) that Sun was urging on them. However, the justices respectfully disagreed with that court’s interpretation. In this court’s view, Guo’s good faith belief was irrelevant to granting or withholding putative spouse status from Sun. Summing up, they held that a party who seeks putative spouse status must have an objective good faith belief in the validity of his or her marriage. Since Sun lacked such a belief, the panel concluded that the trial court had not erred in denying his request for that status.