Divorce Lawyer: Do You Have to Be Married In Order To Get Divorced?

To someone other than a divorce lawyer, it is strange to think that it is could be possible to get a court to end your marriage if you were never validly married to begin with. In some places, however, this is possible, and there are some good reasons for why your attorney may want to pursue a legal breakup even though there could have been some technical problems with your marriage.

Many courts do not look with an enormous amount of scrutiny as to whether the marriage was even valid in the paper and proceedings to terminate the marriage. Each state has its own requirements of what a valid marriage means, and the requirements for what it takes to end a marriage.

For instance, in Louisiana, a marriage is legally valid, making you in need of a divorce lawyer, as long as the parties have given their consent to be husband and wife in a ceremony in which both were actually present such that the person administering the proceedings can determine whether each side is giving their free consent to be married. Additionally, both parties need to have reasonably believed that the person who is marrying them has the legal ability to do so, and the parties need to not have any legal impediments preventing the marriage. Legal impediments in Louisiana include being related to each other, being already married, and not being of the opposite gender from each other.

This means that it is not always the case that you need a valid marriage license to be married, and so courts do not always ask for the certificate to be attached by a divorce lawyer when breaking up by a court judgment. Even if the marriage may not be valid, there are some good reasons to get a judgment anyway. This is despite the fact that sometimes it is possible to get a marriage declared null.

Many courts simply look to the fact that a marriage ceremony took place on a certain date, or that the parties were married on a certain date. This means that, theoretically, it could be possible to have a ceremony take place on a specified time, but this never resulted in an actual marriage. This is not to say that you should defraud a court into thinking that you were married and you actually were not. Rather, it seems possible and probable that a court could grant you a judgment ending your marriage without you ever have been married.

Such a result seems that it would happen more often than one would think. This is because it is not standard practice for a divorce lawyer to ask in depth questions concerning the validity of the marriage. More often than not, the conversation between attorney and client certain revolves around child custody, child support, and division of property issues. This means that it is not often done that an attorney will inquire as to whether, for example, both parties were present during the ceremony. For the vast majority of the time, the attorney simply asks when and where the parties were married, assuming that everything was done properly by the person administering the ceremony. However, when clients state that they are concerned that their marriage is not valid, it is normal to look into whether the proper procedure was followed.

The above material is intended for information purposes only. It is not intended as professional legal advice and should not be construed as such. Attorney William H. Beaumont practices in New Orleans, La.