Wife MIA After 2 Years!

Bimmer said:

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Missouri

I'll try to make this brief. From 2001 to 2007 we lived in Minnesota. Spring 2007 I announce I wanted a divorce after 25 years of her drug abuse, lying, physical assaults and leaving us in financial ruin(penniless). Sept 2007 she moves back to Washington state where we both lived for 20+ years and were married at. Oct 2007 I moved here to Missouri. Since then, in the last 6 months no one knows where she is. Both her family and friends have disowned her. Seriously!!! I have and have always been on good standings with her family including the kids. We never had any kids of our own and I didn't adopt hers. I currently own nothing but my car. I have literally no money. I'm on workmans comp and I go to college on student loans. What the heck do I do now? I want this divorce so I can move on with my life. Last anyone knows she was in Washington state but who knows? She could be as far away as New Jersey. In the last 2 years she's had to move 7 different times that we all can count. But the last anyone heard from her was 6 months ago. I would think this would be easy. No Kids. No property. No $$$ involved unless you want to include all the bills. I have all the papers filled out for this state including an itemized statement showing my acceptance of 50% of the bills. Legally, what can and what must I do?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

~David

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LdiJ said:

There are ways to get divorced when you cannot find your spouse, but you honestly need an attorney to get that kind of divorce.

On top of that, even if you get a judge to order that she has to pay 1/2 of the bills, that doesn't absolve you from being 100% responsible for the bills. The creditors are not parties to your divorce and are bound only by the credit agreements. Based on what you have described about her, it sounds like you are going to get stuck with all of them....or at least all of them that have your name on them.

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Bali Hai said:

Well in that case he just gets the judge to slap her with contempt where she goes to jail until such time that she pays up on her obligation just as any man would be treated.

In the meantime, she loses her driver's license, passport, any professional licenses, tax returns, liens put on any assets and gets her wages garnished.

I'm very surprised that you left all these things out in your response.

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LdiJ said:

Bali, he stated that she has lived 7 places in the last two years and no one, not even her family knows where she is. His hope of collecting anything from her is slim. Sure, all of those things can be done, but if she is drifting, the system won't have much luck catching up with her.

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Bali Hai said:

Well we are here to advise the legal options available to this OP and not to conjucture about how efficient the system is.

She will eventually surface on a bench warrant for her arrest. Warrants aren't only effective on men you know.

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LdiJ said:

Bali, I know you do not participate on the child support forum, but if you did, you would realize that the advice I gave is completely gender neutral.

Whether its debts, alimony, child support or anything else, if someone doesn't care enough about their own financial life to settle down somewhere, get a job and care about their own credit, it can be tougher than nails to collect from them. Those kinds of people don't care if they have a driver's license or passport, and rarely have any kind of professional license. They especially do not care whether or not they have good credit.

So...if OP wants to protect his credit score, he is going to get stuck with those bills. Its just reality.

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