California - Anulling/voiding marriage after death

[CA_Beneficiary]

Sorry for beating a dead horse. Just wanted to approach this topic from every angle. I do understand that it is up to us to prove any allegations we may have against this woman. However, I wanted to explore if a situation could exist where the courts may find enough justification to request that the woman provide proof of her marriage (remember that she is a convicted felon, never attended Stanford but has it listed on her resume, etc...). All in all, it appears that none of this matters. For any allegation we may have against another person it is up to us to prove the allegation and if we can't then the matter will not be considered.

Thank you for your insights IAAL.

 

[dallas702]

IAAL;

I didn't see how much of an estate the man had, but how much of "it" gets into the hands of the widow after a 6 week marriage? I'm guessing by the OP's concerns that he didn't have an estate plan that protected his heirs. Does that massive debt of hers become a debt of the estate?

 

[I AM ALWAYS LIABLE]

IAAL;

I didn't see how much of an estate the man had, but how much of "it" gets into the hands of the widow after a 6 week marriage?

MY RESPONSE: She get her half of his Estate, and she gets half of his half - - or 3/4 of the Estate. The rest is divided "per sterpes."




Does that massive debt of hers become a debt of the estate?

MY RESPONSE: Nope. It still belongs to her. But now, presumably, she'll have the money to pay it down, or off, with the money from the Estate.

IAAL

 

[CA_Beneficiary]

My Father's death fell under the California Testate guidelines (he had a will and a Trust in place), but his new wife has successfully petitioned the court to be added to his estate as an Omitted Spouse. However, because my Father is leaving 5 sons behind, she is only entitled to a third of his estate (versus a full half if he had only a single heir).

A petition has been pushed into our probate matter from the people she was ordered to pay restitution to. In this petition, the court is being asked to halt any payments to the new wife and instead pay the owed amount out of her portion of the estate (once the probate process is completed and prior to any further payments to her).

This is where my question came in about nullifying or voiding a marriage. Nullifying the marriage is out since my Father is no longer alive to scream "fraud" at this woman, and voiding the marriage may also be impossible unless we can prove that our Father's new wife was never fully divorced from her previous husband. Yesterday, I reported that the new wife lied on her Marriage affidavit and shaved 6 years off of her age. Today, I got a copy of this affidavit where she listed herself as divorced, on 5/4/1998 in Conway, South Carolina. We spoke with a clerk at the Horry County family services division and they have no record on that date of this particular divorce. We are now sending an investigator to the courthouse to locate any records for this woman.

Would two incorrect entries on her application for a marriage certificate count as a fraudulent application? Would the absence of any divorce papers from the county specified on her application suffice as proof that she was not properly divorced? This is a legal document she signed with threats of perjury all over it. Seems as if a rationale judge this was brought to would have to ask her to show proof. Certainly the burden of proof will be hers if this becomes a criminal perjury case? Wouldn't it?

 

[dallas702]

Unfortunately, what seems logical and right to us isn't necessarily what the law allows, nor will prevail in court. IAAL is right on target when it comes to what it will take to scrape the dog-doo off of this situation. The poor grieving widow will cry and say she gave him the best few months she could at the end of his life...and how he really wanted her to have everything he had.

It sounds like your research is on the right track, but getting that judge to agree is the key. Heck, even Anna Nicole lost out in the end (but I'll bet a few attorneys made out pretty well).

 

[rmet4nzkx]

Well now you are getting to some tangible information. Do you know the name of her husband at that time? What information have you been able to obtain by virtue of the creditors for the restitution judgement? Are there court or police records? Was your father competent? How old was he?

Yes, you will have to send someone to the courthouse to look for records since they do not have a searchable database online. You may also check the social security death index for her husband's name just in case he is deceased, if so when would make a difference what you do.

Was there any question re the cause of death for your father?

 

[BelizeBreeze]

OR, option number three:

Gather your evidence, meet with the woman with your attorney present, and offer her a fair settlement in lieu of you presenting the evidence of her fraud upon the court.

in other words, either give up her rights to any part of the estate or take her chances that a judge will void the marriage and leave her out on the street.

 

[LdiJ]

OR, option number three:

Gather your evidence, meet with the woman with your attorney present, and offer her a fair settlement in lieu of you presenting the evidence of her fraud upon the court.

in other words, either give up her rights to any part of the estate or take her chances that a judge will void the marriage and leave her out on the street.

What motivation would she have to agree? Anything less than the 100,000 restitution she owes is going to go directly to her creditors...she won't see a penny of it. Unless the estate is large enough that 100,000 plus some extra to "sweeten the pot" would be a settlement the son's could live with....I can't see that working.

 

[BelizeBreeze]

What motivation would she have to agree? Anything less than the 100,000 restitution she owes is going to go directly to her creditors...she won't see a penny of it. Unless the estate is large enough that 100,000 plus some extra to "sweeten the pot" would be a settlement the son's could live with....I can't see that working.

Then you stand in front of a judge and explain why you were attempting to commit fraud upon the court and see if YOU would be motivated to get the hell out of there?

 

[CA_Beneficiary]

This may not offer much in this discussion thread about voiding this woman's marriage to my Father, but it does give a little more insight into what motivates this woman...

The creditors who are after her for $100,000 are some former employers of hers who filed criminal felony charges against this woman over 10 years ago. Apparently, she embezzled a great deal of money from their company (this is a law firm where she worked as a paralegal), and just as they were starting to suspect her she quits her job. A year and a half goes by while they're working on building a criminal case against her, when suddenly a lot of forged checks for one of their clients start coming in. The woman stole a lot of blank business checks for a firm that was represented by her employers and started cashing these checks for quite a bit of money. Felony charges were finally filed (Embezzlement, Forgery, Grand Theft), but she plea bargained down to a plea of guilty for the single Grand Theft charge. She was ordered to pay back 2/3's of what she stole (roughly $67,000), given 6 months electronic monitoring, and 3 years of probation. Her former employers also researched her background a little better and realized that the Stanford University education she claimed on her resume to their firm was false (she had never even attended a single class on campus). So, 10 years ago she was ordered to start making restitution payments, but instead she dropped out of sight after paying only about $2,700. This is where we come back to the issue of voiding my Father's marriage to this woman...

She meets my Father. Moves in with him within a week. Suddenly new rules regarding visiting our Father come into play (call before coming over, don't show up unexpectedly, etc...), and before a year is up our Dad suddenly starts pushing away from his sons (I don't want to hang out with that son - he's crooked. My new girlfriend doesn't like that son coming around anymore because he's crude and has lousy manners. Until this grandson learns how to behave, I don't want him coming around anymore.) We guarantee that our Dad did not know about his future wife's criminal past, her bogus college education, or the huge restitution she had to pay back (which she couldn't even wipe out by going bankrupt). Unfortunately, as IAAL said earlier in this thread - it was up to our Dad to claim fraud and anull his marriage. Now that he's dead there's just no way we'd be able to prove this.

However, because we just learned of her criminal past we're starting to take a real close look at the circumstances surrounding this woman's marriage to our father. She did falsify her birthdate on the application for marriage. We don't think she did this to present herself as a younger woman to our Father, but to throw off any background checks which may be looking for her specific name to her specific birthdate.

If we learn that the date and place of her divorce on the application is also false, along with the background we now have on this woman, wouldn't this start to make a compelling case towards voiding this woman's marriage to our Father?

(Wow that took a long time to circle around and get to the question!)

 

[rmet4nzkx]

How old was your father and was he competent or did he have any diminished capacity due to his illness? I am asking these questions for a reason. Was there undue influence? What if any contracts, written, implied, verbal? It is unlikely if he knew of her restitution order, that he would have joined finances with her if he was competent.
If you know the name of the husband, you might be able to find out more information by contacting him. Also realize that SC is a common law state and many people falsley believe that they don't have to get a divorce if it is a common law marriage. The date of the divorce may be a separation date and not a divorce, so you may have to prove both the marriage and divorce and that she was free to marry the SC husband.

 

[LdiJ]

Then you stand in front of a judge and explain why you were attempting to commit fraud upon the court and see if YOU would be motivated to get the hell out of there?

I see your point if they can actually prove that she wasn't legally divorced when she married their father.....but I thought you were suggesting that they make the offer rather than attempt to prove that she wasn't legally divorced...sorry if I misunderstood.

 

[CA_Beneficiary]

My Father was 62 when he met this woman, 67 when he married her and 6 weeks later when he was found drowned in his jacuzzi with a BAL of .24. He was a heavy drinker his entire life (beer), had switched to hard liquor when he met this woman (who wouldn't?), was diagnosed with Cirhossis of the liver and was on a donor list for a new liver. He was in the later stages of Cirhossis, and his mental acuity was diminished however only slightly and only in regards to the huge blindspot he had for this woman (she dressed very provocatively all the time, always had her hair professionally styled, lots of manicures and pedicures, claimed to have that Stanford education, claimed to come from a well to do family, etc... Our Dad really felt like he was "marrying up", you know.). We just thought for the longest time that our Dad had simply found a woman who liked to drink like him, and just didn't have the nicest personality in the world (she has been known to get quite drunk and spout obscenities like a sailor in Bangkok. She has also been known to strike our Father upon occasion if he displeased her. He would scream bloody murder when this would happen and threaten to "Pitch her out the door" but this never happened.) Little did we know of her criminal background. This entire situation has been a real eye-opener for our family. We once use to trust people on the word they gave us, but now we have painfully learned that people are often not who they claim to be.

Anyway. Returning to rmet4nzkx's question. His mental capacity was slightly diminished, but he was still lucid enough to the very end to make his own decisions (however bad they may have been).

 

[rmet4nzkx]

My Father was 62 when he met this woman, 67 when he married her and 6 weeks later when he was found drowned in his jacuzzi with a BAL of .24. He was a heavy drinker his entire life (beer), had switched to hard liquor when he met this woman (who wouldn't?), was diagnosed with Cirhossis of the liver and was on a donor list for a new liver. He was in the later stages of Cirhossis, and his mental acuity was diminished however only slightly and only in regards to the huge blindspot he had for this woman (she dressed very provocatively all the time, always had her hair professionally styled, lots of manicures and pedicures, claimed to have that Stanford education, claimed to come from a well to do family, etc... Our Dad really felt like he was "marrying up", you know.). We just thought for the longest time that our Dad had simply found a woman who liked to drink like him, and just didn't have the nicest personality in the world (she has been known to get quite drunk and spout obscenities like a sailor in Bangkok. She has also been known to strike our Father upon occasion if he displeased her. He would scream bloody murder when this would happen and threaten to "Pitch her out the door" but this never happened.) Little did we know of her criminal background. This entire situation has been a real eye-opener for our family. We once use to trust people on the word they gave us, but now we have painfully learned that people are often not who they claim to be.

Anyway. Returning to rmet4nzkx's question. His mental capacity was slightly diminished, but he was still lucid enough to the very end to make his own decisions (however bad they may have been).

His age at time of marriage and death being past 65 would have made him eligible for protection under California's elder and dependent adult laws and a violation such as what happened, including battery, financial fraud and isolation etc, is a violation of both W&I and penal codes CA PC 368, so you may have options wether or not annulment is possible. Is it possible she was intentionally trying to kill him by giving him alcohol? Could she have possibly assisted his death once he was drunk? Was APS ever called? Was there any investigation of his death by the police? Was there an autopsy?

 

[CA_Beneficiary]

There was a brief investigation after our Father's death (it was an "Unattended Death" which required a police inquiry). Unfortunately, our Dad also suffered from emphezema (smoked too much) and once a little bit of water got into his lungs he just didn't have sufficient power to expell the water (very little water was found in his lungs during his autoposy). Our Dad was also relatively feeble from his Cirhosis and Emphezema add this to his level of intoxication that night and we suspect that a quick, unexpected dunk would have been all it would have taken to drown him.

The wife, of course, stated that she was asleep and our Dad must have gone into the Jacuzzi sometime after 11pm, and she didn't find him until about 4-5am. Once the investigation began, all of the sons screamed bloody murder, but other family members out of state said that we were angry with our father (with her prodding our Dad disowned one of his sons because according to our Dad his son was a crook not knowing that he was taking advice from the biggest crook of us all). These family members also said that this woman was good for our Father and "gave him the will to live". Regrettably, they only saw my father for a day or two once every year or two. Since all this recent information came out, these same family members who helped kill the investigation have now starting to say that they think "something funny seems to be going on here".

As a side note: When the Police first arrived on the initial call for the unattended death, the new wife was very adamant about our Father's wishes for no autopsy; however, we insisted and it was a matter of course that an autopsy be performed since this was an unattended death. This is when the coroner reported that no trauma was present on the body and very little water was in the lungs which would have been consistent with a quick dunk with a small amount of water getting into the lungs.

As for her assisting him with his alcohol problem: Our Father was an alcoholic who claimed that his problem was "minor and totally controllable". When he was diagnosed with Cirhosis, his doctor told him to stop drinking immediately, placed him on the liver transplant waiting list, and told our father to take steps to make himself healthy. Our Father gave up his drinking and switched to gatorade (he drank it constantly); but he never insisted that his house be a "Dry House" to his then-live-in-girlfriend. She was an alcoholic too, and drank like a fish. Eventually our Father gave in to temptation and started drinking again. I met my father one evening for dinner and he ordered two margueritas - one for himself and one for his girlfriend. I about keel over in dismay. I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. He replied that there wasn't anything wrong with a man enjoying a cocktail every now and then. I reminded him of his medical condition, and he explained that he didn't have Cirhosis, that his doctor had misdiagnosed him, and what his real problem was his need to manage his dietary salt intake (a symptom of Cirhosis is swelling of the legs and ankles due to excessive water retention, and this particular symptom can be controlled by reducing your intake of salt). We had quite the argument as I explained to him that he was being irrational. Did his girlfriend chime in to assist us in convincing our Father to stop drinking? Did she help in anyway. No. She ignored the entire conversation while staring out the window sipping her own drink.

Unfortunately, most of our "evidence" against this woman is like the above story. Purely ancedotal.