Divorce Papers Problem

[TerriandEric 4]

I have been reading this off & on all morning here. Surely the OP would have some kind of vague recollection of where they married even being 20+ years ago? We had to submit copies of BOTH our divorce decrees for the I129F petition as we had both been married twice before. Somebody in your family may have recollection of where the marriage took place & you could then search the records office there.

As Vanessa said, lying will only make it worse. I would call USCIS and ask them how you would go about the process from here. Social networking sites suck as Facebook,myspace etc are great resources for finding people.

Edited January 6, 2010 by TerriandEric

[VanessaTony 3,567]

You know I haven't been able to even find her name on any search. But even if I could find her name SOMEWHERE....I'd still be looking for the specific marriage/divorce papers, which takes me back to square one...the county clerks' office. Which needs more than her name and my name. They need approximate years (which really I don't know, I was a singer in rock band in the 80s...hint hint)... I even wonder if we had official wedding... I don't recall much from those years. Life is so much better now!! ...

lol

Okay so you need to remember approximate. Based on what you said:

1. what age were you when you married? Surely you remember whether you were late teens (i.e. 19, 20) or heading on up towards 30

2. you said you moved while she divorced you. Do you remember where to, or roughly when that was, or a friend that you met after you moved that could remember when you met them? Maybe check your credit history for the apartment you moved into?

3. On that vein, did you move in with your wife at the time? Do you remember where you were living? That'll give you a time frame from your moving out date

4. Was there ANYTHING you got together?

5. Do you remember what song was popular at the time? You could do a wiki search. Like personally, that friggen frog song... *shudder*... I remember that well :S

6. You were in a band, do you remember any gigs around the time? Or cd's or tapes you released?

Hope this helps to jog your memory

[nlovewithher 0]

have you tried facebook searching her or myspace? Or googling her? you said it's a common name but maybe she has a good profile pic so you know for sure it's her (my 60 y/o half-sister has a FB! as does my husbands grandmother so not only "kids" join)

Can you think of ANY records you had with her? Maybe a joint bank account, the state you were married in at least? Would your family/friends know a rough year? Can you think of a range of dates? Like "it was hot" or "it was Christmas soon"... something like that?

I'm not sure how legal this is, but maybe the school her kids attended? Surely the government keeps track of kids and their education?

I tried looking found nothing. FB, Myspace, all nada, and I have even went though pages and pages of people looking.

I had an approximate year for the marriage certificate but the clerk found nothing. I was hoping to get more info from it if I had found it.

I think it was spring or fall of about 15 years ago. I have one living relative, my mother, and she don’t remember much about it either. It wasn’t like a big church wedding; it was some guy who was supposed to be some pastor friend in the living room. (Sounds like straight from Jerry Springer)

Her kids were not in school yet at the time. I remember one of their first names, but they both had different last names and I don’t remember them. The other daughter was called by a nickname. (Yes both daughters had different fathers, and not her last name. I think that should have been a warning sign at the time.)

Remembering things about this marriage is like trying to recall a fender bender from 15 years ago, she had little impact on my life over all, and was a very forgettable mistake. Imagine getting drunk in Vegas and waking up married, it was kind of like that. (How did I do that? Why? Wow that was dumb!)

Moral to the story.. Don’t take marriage or divorce lightly.

We may have taught ourselves that marriage is almost disposable in this country but guess what, when you finally pull your head out of your butt and want to make it count for real. This sort of thing bites you.

[VanessaTony 3,567]

Look at this article: http://lifehacker.com/280785/where-to-find...-records-online

Try this website: http://www.vitalrec.com/

I searched vitalrec and without paying it actually found a marriage record this time. I just didn't pay to see it.

GOOD LUCK!

[Old Dominion 26]

Although it's all a bad memory, maybe, and you have burnt your bridges from those days, didn't the two of you have any friends together? A landlord? You can be your own PI if you try hard enough.

[Ladylethal 12]

Shouldn't your marriage certificate show by your SSN? Even if your name is common it should show up in the county you married. Even if she can have disappeared completely your marriage record shouldn't, and with that you'll get her name, her parent's name and maybe her SSN and might be able to locate her or the divorce certificate, if she ever did file for one. If you two aren't in fact divorced you're in bigger trouble by having remarried without being legally able to do so.

[nlovewithher 0]

lol

Okay so you need to remember approximate. Based on what you said:

1. what age were you when you married? Surely you remember whether you were late teens (i.e. 19, 20) or heading on up towards 30

2. you said you moved while she divorced you. Do you remember where to, or roughly when that was, or a friend that you met after you moved that could remember when you met them? Maybe check your credit history for the apartment you moved into?

3. On that vein, did you move in with your wife at the time? Do you remember where you were living? That'll give you a time frame from your moving out date

4. Was there ANYTHING you got together?

5. Do you remember what song was popular at the time? You could do a wiki search. Like personally, that friggen frog song... *shudder*... I remember that well :S

6. You were in a band, do you remember any gigs around the time? Or cd's or tapes you released?

Hope this helps to jog your memory

1. About 25 give or take a year

2. Yes, I move to the same state I am in now. Didn’t have any friends to speak of and still have only a few. Mostly only work acquaintances. Changed jobs a couple times since then, and that company was bought out and no longer exists and I haven’t seen anyone from it in 11+ years. Credit history shows nothing, granted I don’t use credit, and have never even had a credit card until recently. Seriously, I paid 28K in cash for a new van for my second ex-wife rather than get a loan. I have only had 3 loans in my whole life. One was a student loan, a car loan for my second ex-wife’s second van (after the one for 28K got totaled), a house I had bought and later sold but paid the down payment in cash. I have had mostly only saving account because I don’t even like to use checking. Even now I only have a BPI account, 410k, 1 visa card and investments. No debt at all currently.

3. Ya, still give me about the same time frame.

4. I think bought a couch while I was with her, but I paid cash.

5. Music, don’t recall. Musically I was stuck in 1986 for a very long time.

6. I wasn’t in a band. Maybe some other post. I’m a computer nerd. I do recall Quake coming out about then. So about 1996, same time range. The Quake thing has me a little closer to a year I think.

[nlovewithher 0]

Although it's all a bad memory, maybe, and you have burnt your bridges from those days, didn't the two of you have any friends together? A landlord? You can be your own PI if you try hard enough.

Friends no. I really didn’t. I was very much a loner at the time. I did have a landlord but I don’t remember the woman’s name.

[nlovewithher 0]

Shouldn't your marriage certificate show by your SSN? Even if your name is common it should show up in the county you married. Even if she can have disappeared completely your marriage record shouldn't, and with that you'll get her name, her parent's name and maybe her SSN and might be able to locate her or the divorce certificate, if she ever did file for one. If you two aren't in fact divorced you're in bigger trouble by having remarried without being legally able to do so.

As I said the county clerk can’t find the marriage license so I have no idea what it has or don’t have on it.

If I am supposed to assume that the lack of divorce papers means I was never legally divorced then I would by that logic be forced to assume my married was never legal considering I can’t find the license either.

However I do know both do exist.

While the clerk can’t find the marriage license, that don’t stop the K-1. Not finding the divorce on the other hand is a problem.

[Robby999 1,024]

Ok, here is an unusual situation I am hoping someone might have some advice on.

About 15 years ago I got married to a woman who can only be classified as a gold digger. Six months into our marriage she informed me that the only reason she married me was to give her two daughters 'a standard of living she never had'. Needless to say we separated after that. A few weeks later I was told she was moving out of state and filing for divorce so that she could go on disability. She just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to fight it. I told her she was more than welcome to a default judgment and I myself was moving out of state too. We were not married long enough for her to get alimony and I didn't have a lot of money at the time anyway. We had no children together so no child support was involved. We didn't have any community property. I have no doubt that she filed and got the default judgment of divorce. So I just simply went about my life and moved on.

After a couple years I got married again. It was over all a good marriage and lasted for ten years. Regretfully we did grow apart and did eventually get a divorce. We were both to blame, a true no fault divorce. We are still on good terms as friends and have four children. She has a live-in boyfriend and will probably marry him soon; he is even a nice guy.

First try... real bad idea.

Second try… almost.

Now here comes the girl of my dreams. As a boy I had heard the legend of the Guff, a place in heaven where the souls of people would play there until they were ready to be born, and if two souls fell in love there they were fated as soul mates and would search for each other and never be satisfied until they were together again. She is the kind of girl who makes you believe that story. Smart, sweet and beautiful, only she isn't from the US, so I need a K-1 visa for her. (God has a sense of humor so he put her on the other side of the world from me.)

The problem is this...

I have the divorce papers from the second divorce but not the first. I don't know what state or county she moved to or where she filed divorce, at the time I didn't care. I have no information other than my first x-wife's first and possible last name. To make it worse it's a very common first and last name. I don't have any info on her friends or family, school, anything. We didn't even file a joint tax return at any time. I don't even know her middle name. Basically I can't find anything to work with to try and find her to ask her where the papers are, if she would even bother to tell me. She could be remarried or dead for all I know. Getting a PI to search for essentially a "Mary Smith" would be VERY expensive and I doubt would do much good. I had considered divorcing her in my state again just so I have the papers; I can do that relatively cheap and without too much difficulty. However my divorce attorney advised not to because it might cause the court to call into question the legality of some things with my second marriage and divorce.

So what are my options?

1. Don't mention it on the K-1 and hope they don't notice. (How much risk is there that they would even find it really?)

2. Spend a huge amount of money and possibly years searching for her and the papers.

3. Divorce her again and create the possibility for a bunch of legal problems.

4. Other (I am open to suggestions)

I will do whatever it takes.

I hate to fly, I mean I become Mr. Monk on a one hour flight, but I have flown to the opposite side of the planet four times for this woman. I live in the southwest and the only Spanish I speak is 'no habla espanol', but I am learning Filipino and Bisaya even though her English is perfect. I move to Davao and lived with her for four months, and I won't even go through the bad part of town here. I don't like durian and hate the smell of it but I'm trying to grow a durian tree from seed, knowing it won't fruit for years if I can even get it to grow just because she loves it even though I can buy frozen durian.

What should I do? HELP!

Did your divorce attorney mention possibility of filing a nunc pro tunc , if allowed in your state that would dissolve the first marriage and back date the papers to an earlier date! Your lawyer can explain the process better than me. Good luck!!!!

[nlovewithher 0]

Did your divorce attorney mention possibility of filing a nunc pro tunc , if allowed in your state that would dissolve the first marriage and back date the papers to an earlier date! Your lawyer can explain the process better than me. Good luck!!!!

No he didn’t but that’s the first good idea I have heard.

If that don’t work, I think my best move at this point is to talk to my second ex-wife and my attorney and file for divorce from my first wife again. Make sure my bases are covered with the second ex-wife.

Sure I will look like an idiot, but it was stupid and so rightfully so I guess I got it coming to me.

No one has any magical ideas for finding it. I don’t remember a d*nm thing useful.

A PI is just flushing money.

I’m not sure about just not mentioning it on the paperwork. I am sure there is some risk of there being some mystery database if I do that.

[nlovewithher 0]

I have been reading this off & on all morning here. Surely the OP would have some kind of vague recollection of where they married even being 20+ years ago? We had to submit copies of BOTH our divorce decrees for the I129F petition as we had both been married twice before. Somebody in your family may have recollection of where the marriage took place & you could then search the records office there.

As Vanessa said, lying will only make it worse. I would call USCIS and ask them how you would go about the process from here. Social networking sites suck as Facebook,myspace etc are great resources for finding people.

OP?

[Robby999 1,024]

No he didn't but that's the first good idea I have heard.

If that don't work, I think my best move at this point is to talk to my second ex-wife and my attorney and file for divorce from my first wife again. Make sure my bases are covered with the second ex-wife.

Sure I will look like an idiot, but it was stupid and so rightfully so I guess I got it coming to me.

No one has any magical ideas for finding it. I don't remember a d*nm thing useful.

A PI is just flushing money.

I'm not sure about just not mentioning it on the paperwork. I am sure there is some risk of there being some mystery database if I do that.

I thought I was in the same boat as you myself. I was lucky enough to know the whereabouts of my first wife though, she said she had a copy of the papers and had lost them. I never received a copy of papers, I relied on the fact the county had a copy. Well to make a long story short, the county had no record of the divorce. Our county had built a new courthouse about 15 years ago and I assume some papers were misplaced while transporting the records dept to new building. You should have seen the look on my face when the court clerk said she had no record of my divorce. Anyway I wound up sending of to the Vital Records Dept using the year I was divorced as a starting point. I was not sure of the exact date, I was deployed while the divorce was being completed. It took 4 weeks to receive an answer, but I got a certified confirmation of divorce between the first wife and myself. I was going crazy just like you also, that is how I found out about the nunc pro tunc petition. That was going to be my last resort if all other attempts failed. I would talk with my attorney before I mentioned the matter to anyone! So take a deep breath and relax, you still options! OP? original poster> you!

Edited January 6, 2010 by Robby999

[Ladylethal 12]

Ah yes, if US has that law (Brasil does) you should def make use of it.

[Ladylethal 12]

EDIT: It double posted me for some reason.

Edited January 6, 2010 by Ladylethal