Divorce Lawyer Louisiana - A Recent Case on the Difficulty in Entering a Covenant Marriage

A covenant marriage in Louisiana is a marriage where the parties enter into a "covenant," they go through special counseling, and they make it much more difficult for a divorce lawyer to end the marriage. It is in effect designed to make it much more difficult to end the marriage with the hope that the parties will be successful in getting counseling to keep the marriage together in the event of difficulties between the spouses. From a recent case, it appears that the standard for proving the existence of the covenant marriage is high, meaning that it will be crucial that spouses keep records of their covenant marriage and make sure that everything is done very accurately procedurally.

In this case, one divorce lawyer argued that to Louisiana's Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the parties contracted a valid covenant marriage in New Orleans, La. By this account, the parties went through the counseling sessions required by the statute and both parties signed a statement in effect stating that their marriage was a covenant one. This statement referenced a document of intent as being attached, but this was no longer attached by the time the parties went to court. Also, because of Hurricane Katrina the bureau of vital records no longer had the document either.

The other divorce lawyer seized on this missing document and persuaded the court that without it a covenant marriage could not be declared. At the hearing, evidence was presented regarding the pastor who had administered the pre-covenant counseling and he could not remember whether this was provided to both parties approximately ten years earlier. Moreover, the court also held that simply the parties signing a joint statement that their marriage will be a covenant was not sufficient to sustain this type of marriage.

In short, it will be important for your divorce lawyer when you are asserting that your marriage is a covenant one in order to have all of the documents that show that every step of the procedure was done. Absent this, you will need good testimony from others who were integral in establishing the marriage to testify that they specifically are aware that all of the elements were met. For the most part this should not be a problem; obviously (and hopefully!) Hurricane Katrina was an event that will not likely be repeated frequently and so it may be possible to rely on the vital records of the parish in Louisiana that you live in. This will be important because from looking at this case and the ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals it seems that courts are unlikely to rule to support a covenant marriage without strong evidence to the contrary,

From the perspective of this divorce lawyer, it is unclear what the advantage of prolonging a marriage by contesting whether the marriage is a covenant one. Unless interim spousal support can be extended it would seem silly to contest the covenant aspect if the marriage is in fact over.

Will Beaumont is a lawyer in New Orleans. This article is strictly informational and not legal advice.