Divorce in Belize

[eap620 0]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for the following situation:

I am a U.S. citizen living in Texas. I used to live in Belize, where I was married to a Belizean citizen in Dec. of 2006. Things are not going to work out between us and I need to get a divorce. First, I was wondering if my divorce is even legal here in the U.S.? I have never claimed it on anything here in the states. All I have is my marriage license from Belize City and it states my place of residence as down there.

Next, I'm wondering how to go about getting a divorce down there. I realize we need this divorce for his sake so he can get remarried in the future although I don't have much contact with him at all. And I may not easily be able to get a hold of him. That is mainly why I am wondering the legality of the marriage in Texas. Otherwise, as far as getting divorced, does anyone know if I have to be present in Belize or can I do it from Texas? Also, anybody have any idea on the timeframe or costs?

Just any general info. or experience from anyone would be great. I have researched online and am having major trouble finding anything on Belize. Any help offered will be appreciated!

Thanks so much,

Erin

[diadromous mermaid 36]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for the following situation:

I am a U.S. citizen living in Texas. I used to live in Belize, where I was married to a Belizean citizen in Dec. of 2006. Things are not going to work out between us and I need to get a divorce. First, I was wondering if my divorce is even legal here in the U.S.? I have never claimed it on anything here in the states. All I have is my marriage license from Belize City and it states my place of residence as down there.

Next, I'm wondering how to go about getting a divorce down there. I realize we need this divorce for his sake so he can get remarried in the future although I don't have much contact with him at all. And I may not easily be able to get a hold of him. That is mainly why I am wondering the legality of the marriage in Texas. Otherwise, as far as getting divorced, does anyone know if I have to be present in Belize or can I do it from Texas? Also, anybody have any idea on the timeframe or costs?

Just any general info. or experience from anyone would be great. I have researched online and am having major trouble finding anything on Belize. Any help offered will be appreciated!

Thanks so much,

Erin

Divorce law is governed by the state you live in. If you meet Texas requirements with respect to meeting any residency etc you can file for divorce here and serve him there.

[NickD 203]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for the following situation:

I am a U.S. citizen living in Texas. I used to live in Belize, where I was married to a Belizean citizen in Dec. of 2006. Things are not going to work out between us and I need to get a divorce. First, I was wondering if my divorce is even legal here in the U.S.? I have never claimed it on anything here in the states. All I have is my marriage license from Belize City and it states my place of residence as down there.

Next, I'm wondering how to go about getting a divorce down there. I realize we need this divorce for his sake so he can get remarried in the future although I don't have much contact with him at all. And I may not easily be able to get a hold of him. That is mainly why I am wondering the legality of the marriage in Texas. Otherwise, as far as getting divorced, does anyone know if I have to be present in Belize or can I do it from Texas? Also, anybody have any idea on the timeframe or costs?

Just any general info. or experience from anyone would be great. I have researched online and am having major trouble finding anything on Belize. Any help offered will be appreciated!

Thanks so much,

Erin

Divorce law is governed by the state you live in. If you meet Texas requirements with respect to meeting any residency etc you can file for divorce here and serve him there.

Man, or woman in this case, this subject is a can of worms, I never really got into it very deep, but seems to be some kind of international agreement between every country as to whether even a marriage or a divorce is recognized from one country to the next. First thing to find out, if you are in the USA, that's the United States of America, even recognizes a marriage in Belize, if it is, then you have to get a divorce, but if you get that divorce here, doesn't necessarily mean it is recognized by even a neighboring country to Beliz so if you happen to go to that country and remarried, you may be considered as a bigamist. I don't know this for a fact, but just pointing out how the system works. Besides the country mess, if I may call it that, there is even a state mess. I learned that as a resident of Wisconsin, if my wife and I got married in say, Las Vegas, that marriage would not be recognized by the state of Wisconsin, and I may even be fined up to $10,000.00 as the marriage laws in my state differ from those in Nevada. The same holds true for a divorce.

Since my wife is from Venezuela and she was coming to the USA, we had to find out if her marriage and divorce was recognized by the USA, it was, but our marriage here was not recognized in Venezuela and my wife had to keep her citizenship there current as that is the only way she could get a passport as she certainly couldn't get one here as a permanent resident. So we had to go to the Venezuelan consulate with all kinds of proof by their legal standards which are different from us and have our marriage registered in their county before she could get her passport. And that also required proof she was legally divorced in Venezuela, no problems there.

But in her first and only marriage, she was married in Colombia then moved to Venezuela, she knows that her Venezuelan attorney had to work with attorney's in Colombia, but we are still not sure if Colombia recognizes her Venezuelan divorce, but her ex husband did return to Colombia and did remarry so it must be. I would like to know for sure as we have ties in Colombia. I was told by some Colombian attorney it was not, but am currently checking with our Venezuelan attorney that dealt with Colombia, but has to be if her ex did remarrying in Colombia.

Just saying, this is a can of worms, but we are 100% sure the USCIS recognizes both her divorce and our marriage, hired an immigration attorney to check all this stuff out, and yes, dealing with the USA, Venezuela, and Colombia was very expensive. Wonder who, when, or why, and for what reason makes up all these international laws.

[NickD 203]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for the following situation:

I am a U.S. citizen living in Texas. I used to live in Belize, where I was married to a Belizean citizen in Dec. of 2006. Things are not going to work out between us and I need to get a divorce. First, I was wondering if my divorce is even legal here in the U.S.? I have never claimed it on anything here in the states. All I have is my marriage license from Belize City and it states my place of residence as down there.

Next, I'm wondering how to go about getting a divorce down there. I realize we need this divorce for his sake so he can get remarried in the future although I don't have much contact with him at all. And I may not easily be able to get a hold of him. That is mainly why I am wondering the legality of the marriage in Texas. Otherwise, as far as getting divorced, does anyone know if I have to be present in Belize or can I do it from Texas? Also, anybody have any idea on the timeframe or costs?

Just any general info. or experience from anyone would be great. I have researched online and am having major trouble finding anything on Belize. Any help offered will be appreciated!

Thanks so much,

Erin

Divorce law is governed by the state you live in. If you meet Texas requirements with respect to meeting any residency etc you can file for divorce here and serve him there.

Man, or woman in this case, this subject is a can of worms, I never really got into it very deep, but seems to be some kind of international agreement between every country as to whether even a marriage or a divorce is recognized from one country to the next. First thing to find out, if you are in the USA, that's the United States of America, even recognizes a marriage in Belize, if it is, then you have to get a divorce, but if you get that divorce here, doesn't necessarily mean it is recognized by even a neighboring country to Beliz so if you happen to go to that country and remarried, you may be considered as a bigamist. I don't know this for a fact, but just pointing out how the system works. Besides the country mess, if I may call it that, there is even a state mess. I learned that as a resident of Wisconsin, if my wife and I got married in say, Las Vegas, that marriage would not be recognized by the state of Wisconsin, and I may even be fined up to $10,000.00 as the marriage laws in my state differ from those in Nevada. The same holds true for a divorce.

Since my wife is from Venezuela and she was coming to the USA, we had to find out if her marriage and divorce was recognized by the USA, it was, but our marriage here was not recognized in Venezuela and my wife had to keep her citizenship there current as that is the only way she could get a passport as she certainly couldn't get one here as a permanent resident. So we had to go to the Venezuelan consulate with all kinds of proof by their legal standards which are different from us and have our marriage registered in their county before she could get her passport. And that also required proof she was legally divorced in Venezuela, no problems there.

But in her first and only marriage, she was married in Colombia then moved to Venezuela, she knows that her Venezuelan attorney had to work with attorney's in Colombia, but we are still not sure if Colombia recognizes her Venezuelan divorce, but her ex husband did return to Colombia and did remarry so it must be. I would like to know for sure as we have ties in Colombia. I was told by some Colombian attorney it was not, but am currently checking with our Venezuelan attorney that dealt with Colombia, but has to be if her ex did remarrying in Colombia.

Just saying, this is a can of worms, but we are 100% sure the USCIS recognizes both her divorce and our marriage, hired an immigration attorney to check all this stuff out, and yes, dealing with the USA, Venezuela, and Colombia was very expensive. Wonder who, when, or why, and for what reason makes up all these international laws.

I see you do have a:

Belize Consulate

7101 Breen Dr

Houston, TX 77086

(281) 999-4484

in Texas, that is a good place to start. It seems only logical to me, but what do I know, if you got married there, would be the place to get your divorce. In checking in the Colombian divorce laws, was almost impossible to get one just a few years ago as the Roman Catholic Church controlled that country, but today, a couple can get one by going to a notary and just signing some papers for a few pesos.

[desert_fox 32]

Just get divorced in Texas as DM sez. If you are a Texas resident, and meet the length of residency requirement, their courts have jurisdiction.

Ignore all the above, as it makes no sense as the US recognizes all marriages obtained overseas if the home country recognizes it as a valid marriage.

[NickD 203]

Just get divorced in Texas as DM sez. If you are a Texas resident, and meet the length of residency requirement, their courts have jurisdiction.

Ignore all the above, as it makes no sense as the US recognizes all marriages obtained overseas if the home country recognizes it as a valid marriage.

I agree with you if you can severe all relations with your former country and just stay here. But if you have family and own property that you want to see, and if you are here as a permanent resident with the only choice available is to get a passport from your former country, then you have to go by their rules as well. Kind of puts you between a rock and a hard place.

How can you even make a statement like that without knowing all the facts or the future intentions of eap620?

A marriage is a legal contract between a man and a woman and always best broken where it originated from. If Belize recognizes a divorce from Texas, there will be no problems, a simple phone call can verify that. And that is if eap620 may want to return someday.

[desert_fox 32]

Just get divorced in Texas as DM sez. If you are a Texas resident, and meet the length of residency requirement, their courts have jurisdiction.

Ignore all the above, as it makes no sense as the US recognizes all marriages obtained overseas if the home country recognizes it as a valid marriage.

I agree with you if you can severe all relations with your former country and just stay here. But if you have family and own property that you want to see, and if you are here as a permanent resident with the only choice available is to get a passport from your former country, then you have to go by their rules as well. Kind of puts you between a rock and a hard place.

How can you even make a statement like that without knowing all the facts or the future intentions of eap620?

A marriage is a legal contract between a man and a woman and always best broken where it originated from. If Belize recognizes a divorce from Texas, there will be no problems, a simple phone call can verify that. And that is if eap620 may want to return someday.

She is a US citizen living in Texas. It is true that a Texas court would not have jurisdiction on ownership of a piece of property in Belize, but the parties can agree to such issues outside of a court room. That would be true of any property outside of Texas.

[NickD 203]

Just get divorced in Texas as DM sez. If you are a Texas resident, and meet the length of residency requirement, their courts have jurisdiction.

Ignore all the above, as it makes no sense as the US recognizes all marriages obtained overseas if the home country recognizes it as a valid marriage.

I agree with you if you can severe all relations with your former country and just stay here. But if you have family and own property that you want to see, and if you are here as a permanent resident with the only choice available is to get a passport from your former country, then you have to go by their rules as well. Kind of puts you between a rock and a hard place.

How can you even make a statement like that without knowing all the facts or the future intentions of eap620?

A marriage is a legal contract between a man and a woman and always best broken where it originated from. If Belize recognizes a divorce from Texas, there will be no problems, a simple phone call can verify that. And that is if eap620 may want to return someday.

She is a US citizen living in Texas. It is true that a Texas court would not have jurisdiction on ownership of a piece of property in Belize, but the parties can agree to such issues outside of a court room. That would be true of any property outside of Texas.

I am guilty of thinking about my own problems, the poster is a USC and that makes a huge difference, shouldn't post until I had my second cup of coffee, I missed that very important point.

Still a very confusing issue which countries honor either a marriage or divorce, and some of those countries down south may still be under Roman Catholic rule where a divorce won't even be granted. Colombia was that way just a few short years ago, but they changed that. Had to get an annulment that was near impossible and extremely expensive.

Lot depends on the poster, can just forget about the country and be legal here, still wonder who makes all these rules.

[eap620 0]

Thanks for the advice. And sorry for any confusion about my citizenship. I was born in Texas and am a US citizen. My Belizean husband and I do not have any children or property shared. So I was hoping this could be a fairly simple process as far as divorces go. I mainly was curious to know if anyone else has had to divorce their spouse from a foreign country and if they had no pending visas out, if they had to go back to the foreign country to complete the process or not? Does that sentence even make sense? ....Sorry if not.

I will try to call the ph. # for the Belizean consulate in Houston and see what they say. Thanks for the info. If anyone else has any ideas or experience/advice, please let me know.

Thanks so much!

Erin

[NickD 203]

"GET MARRIED QUICK! The Belize government said it would present to the next sitting of the House of Representatives an amendment to the Marriage Act, which will allow tourists to marry in Belize under a special license without publication of bans. Currently, visitors must be in Belize a minimum of three days before getting married. Tourists would send their applications for marriage licenses to Belize in advance of their arrival and could just step off the cruise ship or airplane and get married. Under the proposed new amendment, such licenses will be solemnized through a special license issued by the Attorney General’s Ministry and performed by a senior Justice of the Peace at any place within Belize. (November 8, 2006)"

Hmmm, as a resident of Wisconsin, really objected to our six month waiting rule for marriage license with a severe penalty for getting married anywhere else. Course could have packed up and moved to a different state, but my wife agreed to waiting, we got an extension for her to stay here from my immigration attorney dealing himself with the USCIS, our relationship grew much deeper, but could have gone the other way.

Too easy to get married, but not so easy with a divorce, ha, feel that as part of the marriage license, people should be made to read the rules of a divorce, would have never married my first wife if I knew that. My wife was aware of Belize from Venezuela, actually never even heard about that country until now, sounds like a very romantic place to visit.

Friends that married in different countries wanting a divorce got messy as the spouses were in two different countries requiring power of attorneys, and those powers were attorneys charging more than a couple of bucks per hour. Seems your case is much simpler in that no custody or property settlement is involved. Belize seems to have a law like Colombia, if both spouses go in together, can file a form and get it over with in a hurry, but not clear on that, not much on the web about Belize. Many places have what is called a collaborative divorce got a hint that Belize may have that too where you both go in. But that is the key problem, heard of cases with friends trying to get a divorce where they had to hire a detective agency to find the spouse.

If you have to get involved with attorneys and power of attorneys, agree to a flat fee first, if they won't agree to that, find somebody else, seems to be a huge divorce machine in this country where many are making a huge fortune with victims in a divorce.

I did find this on the web.

"International Divorce? Can It Be Done In USA?

« on: July 12, 2007, 12:52:15 AM »

My fiancee lives with me in the USA, and would like to finalize his divorce to his wife, whom hes been legally seperated from for 8 years and she lives in belize. He lives here in usa. They were married by court. We want to know how much its going to cost, can a lawyer in the usa handle a belize divorce with the husband and wife in 2 different countries and about how long its going to take? Can we marry before the divorce is finalized?"

But the answer wasn't very good.

"

Re: International Divorce? Can It Be Done In USA?

« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2007, 06:47:30 AM »

Not your problem. Tell the new Mr. Right that you'll know he's serious about a relationship with you when he shows you his divorce decree. It's not your job, and it's not your decision, whether he gets a divorce and if so, how he gets it.

Back off. This just reeks of trouble."

This is at, http://divorceinfo.com/heo/index.php?topic=10977.0

But your situation is different, maybe Lee Borden, Administrator will give you some helpful advice, but be careful, you may get creamed.

[badeth 0]

Under Section 6.302 of Texas Family Code, a spouse living in another state or nation can file for divorce suit in the country in which the domiciliary spouse resides at the time the petition is filed.

However, if the spouse wants to acquire jurisdiction over a non-resident spouse, the court may exercise personal jurisdiction over the respondent although the respondent is not a resident of Texas. The respondent must qualify under Sec. 6.305, wherein:

(1) this state is the last marital residence of the petitioner and the respondent and the suit is filed before the second anniversary of the date on which marital residence ended; or

(2) there is any basis consistent with the constitutions of this state and the United States for the exercise of the personal jurisdiction.

(B) A court acquiring jurisdiction under this section also acquires jurisdiction over the respondent in a suit affecting the parent-child relationship.

[KarenCee 3]

I'm guessing this divorce was over a long time ago...thread was started last summer....

[clueless_in_usa 8]

Man, or woman in this case, this subject is a can of worms, I never really got into it very deep, but seems to be some kind of international agreement between every country as to whether even a marriage or a divorce is recognized from one country to the next. First thing to find out, if you are in the USA, that's the United States of America, even recognizes a marriage in Belize, if it is, then you have to get a divorce, but if you get that divorce here, doesn't necessarily mean it is recognized by even a neighboring country to Beliz so if you happen to go to that country and remarried, you may be considered as a bigamist. I don't know this for a fact, but just pointing out how the system works. Besides the country mess, if I may call it that, there is even a state mess. I learned that as a resident of Wisconsin, if my wife and I got married in say, Las Vegas, that marriage would not be recognized by the state of Wisconsin, and I may even be fined up to $10,000.00 as the marriage laws in my state differ from those in Nevada. The same holds true for a divorce.

Since my wife is from Venezuela and she was coming to the USA, we had to find out if her marriage and divorce was recognized by the USA, it was, but our marriage here was not recognized in Venezuela and my wife had to keep her citizenship there current as that is the only way she could get a passport as she certainly couldn't get one here as a permanent resident. So we had to go to the Venezuelan consulate with all kinds of proof by their legal standards which are different from us and have our marriage registered in their county before she could get her passport. And that also required proof she was legally divorced in Venezuela, no problems there.

But in her first and only marriage, she was married in Colombia then moved to Venezuela, she knows that her Venezuelan attorney had to work with attorney's in Colombia, but we are still not sure if Colombia recognizes her Venezuelan divorce, but her ex husband did return to Colombia and did remarry so it must be. I would like to know for sure as we have ties in Colombia. I was told by some Colombian attorney it was not, but am currently checking with our Venezuelan attorney that dealt with Colombia, but has to be if her ex did remarrying in Colombia.

Just saying, this is a can of worms, but we are 100% sure the USCIS recognizes both her divorce and our marriage, hired an immigration attorney to check all this stuff out, and yes, dealing with the USA, Venezuela, and Colombia was very expensive. Wonder who, when, or why, and for what reason makes up all these international laws.

Sorry dude! I completely disagree with you on everything you wrote (except on the Wisconsin thing because I am not familiar with that), but this is not the place or time to get into the details.

However, as a permanent resident of the USA, the Venezuelan consulate of your jurisdiction is obligated to give your wife a passport. The reason she may have had problems was not that she could not get it as a resident (even without showing that she was married). It was more related to the corruption in that country ... but that does not have anything to do with the OP's question.

Any marriage or divorce is better processed where you meet the legal requirements for it. You married in Belize because you were living there at the time, but if you have enough time living in Texas, it is better if you get your divorce in Texas. However, understand that it may take a little longer to process because your husband is not present.

Once it is granted, you can send a copy of the certificate of absolute divorce to your ex, so he can have it available for a future marriage, especially if he wants to remarry in Belize.

Hiring attorneys when not necessary can be expensive, especially when you can easily do it yourself.