|
nyone know of any other countries wherein marriages are required to be in
both languages and comments please....... Annulment action brought in
Florida. H. 60 W. 40
The parties, were purportedly married in Simferopol Crimea Ukraine on July
1, 1994. The application for the marriage was performed, at the time unknown
to petitioner, on June 30, 1994.
Petitioner having made travel arrangements for the purposes of meeting and
potentially getting engaged from the United States to Kiev Ukraine was
induced to leave Kiev to Simferopol Cirmea many miles away and in doing so
entered into an overreaching environment wherein he was totally and
completely dependent on respondent for his survival and return to the United
States. While in this controlled and overreaching environment petitioner was
whisked into a purported marriage with respondent.
The purported marriage was conducted completely in the Russian Language.
Petitioner not ever having received any training in Russian was denied the
ability to enter into this purported marriage freely as he did not
understand a single word or writing in this language. This is the first
argument against the marriage meeting legal form.
Though, we do not ask that the issue of validity, be adjudicated according
to Ukrainian Family Law[1] we reference it, for the courts consideration if
is should so chose. In Ukrainian Family Law the marriage process is similar
to the United States in that there is an application process for a marriage
license followed by a statutory waiting period and concluded with a marriage
ceremony or registration. Unlike the United States, the application process
(Article 29) additionally includes the communication of information on
rights and responsibilities to the parties. The second argument against the
marriage meeting legal form is raised here, in that petitioner has no
recollection of this event ever happening and if it did would not known of
its content owing to his inability to understand either the requirement for
its disclosure or disclosure themselves made in a language he did not
understand.
In the Family Law of the Ukraine this waiting period is thirty days (Article
32) from application to registration, and only "serious reasons" excuse the
applicants from this wait. The parties were registered on June 30 and
married the following day on July 1. The Family Law of the Ukraine is
limited in the circumstances under which the statutory waiting time can be
shortened. However, as officials can be influenced by what is commonly known
as corruption/bribe this period was shortened for reasons completely unknown
to petitioner. The purpose of the shortening was clearly to deny petitioner
the statutory waiting time during which he would have been removed from the
controlling influences and return to the United States. The risk of
petitioners returning to the United States was too great and the undisclosed
agenda too important to respondent for her to take the chance that what was
transpiring would survive the statutory thirty days of waiting, scrutiny and
thought. Therein lies the third challenge to the marriage meeting legal
form.
.
The absence of English language documents for petitioner to read, an
interpreter with which to understand the aspects of what was transpiring,
the failure meet the statutory disclosures in a language or form he could
understand, the influencing of public officials to circumvent statutory wait
times and the failure of respondent to disclose that the sole purpose of
entering this marriage was for immigrating to the United States work
together to create the foundations upon which petitioner brings forth his
claim that the marriage did not meet legal form and is invalid. Petitioner
further claims that the sole purpose of the marriage was for respondents
intentions to say anything or do anything to immigrate into the United
States. Petitioner raises no argument against the desires of peoples all
over the world to make a better life for themselves in this the greatest
country on the face of the earth. Petitioner makes his arguments on
respondents keeping this intent hidden and undisclosed at the time of the
purported marriage itself, and that that hiding and leading him to believe
that he could freely have a life in the Ukraine represented a significant
withholding and how the marriage itself was performed work together to lay a
challenge to the marriage as not meeting legal form and being fraudulent and
overreaching on respondents part.
Subsequent to petitioners return to the Ukraine, wherein he forfeited two
additional years of earnings in his job with IBM and a permanent reduction
in his pension the true purposes of what transpired on July 1 1994 began to
reveal themselves.
Though the parties lived together this did not make them married as Florida
Law does not recognize Common Law marriages. Though the parties referred to
themselves as husband and wife this also did not make them married as terms
like husband and wife, though commonly understood to be man and woman have
ambiguous interpretations in gay marriages which in and of themselves,
though performed as marriages are not marriages at all.
The time of this discovery is irrelevant. In this case discovery occurred
during the process of filing for divorce when respondent, having received
all the consideration for a properly entered marriage agreement for which
there was no further benefit for her to receive, raised arguments that she
did not understand the agreement which was signed as a condition of her
entry into the United States. Respondents claim of language in competency
itself set off the chain of events that lead to the challenges petitioner
brings against the purported marriage itself.
Additionally; petitioner claims that he is unfairly matched in his defense
and that this unfair matching is but one more example of the control that
respondent has exercised over him during these ten years. That un-matching
comes from the fact that respondent comes from a foreign country. Having
been born in Azerbaijan, lived in Armenia, immigrated to the Ukraine and now
in the United States that he is denied equal access to information regarding
respondents past owing to the difficulty in obtaining police records, birth
registrations, marriage records, educational records, employment records,
historical information regarding the circumstances or her movements from
country to country. Even in the depositions respondent makes no sincere
effort to arrive at the truth and makes statements like "I do not recall the
name of the father of my illegitimate child which was conceived prior to the
granting of a divorce from her previous husband"
Given the date of the purported marriage and the gravity of what was
transpiring petitioner claims himself as a victim of the advisory mentioned
on the
|
| |
| |
"Kelly A Gomas" wrote in misc.legal.moderated:
Anyone know of any other countries wherein marriages are required to be in
both languages and comments please....... Annulment action brought in
Florida. H. 60 W. 40
I believe you have misinterpreted this one. It is not a matter of
"marriage required to be in two languages"; it is a matter of a
person being unable to enter into a marriage when the ceremony is
conducted in a language he does not understand.
Read what the filing said:
The purported marriage was conducted completely in the Russian Language.
Petitioner not ever having received any training in Russian was denied the
ability to enter into this purported marriage freely as he did not
understand a single word or writing in this language.
--
If you e-mail me from a fake address, your fingers will drop off.
I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice. When you read anything
legal on the net, always verify it on your own, in light of your
particular circumstances. You may also need to consult a lawyer.
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
|
| |
| |
[long story made short: OP traveled to Ukraine in 1994 for the purpose
of meeting a prospective bride and there married a Ukrainian woman. The
proceedings were irregular according to Ukrainian law and conducted in
Russian, which he did not understand. OP now believes that his putative
spouse entered the marriage for the purpose of obtaining residency in
the United States. OP wants the marriage annulled in Florida on these
grounds.]
Annulment rules in Florida are not well developed, but I was able to
glean the following, none of which will be much help:
Annulments are possible when a marriage is void or voidable. The
distinction is an important one: a void marriage is forever void and
can never become a valid marriage; a voidable marriage becomes a valid
marriage, enforceable against the party seeking to annul it, if that
party has ratified the marriage.
A marriage can be void for incest, bigamy, or the like. Such a marriage
can never become a valid marriage.
A marriage can be voidable for just about any reason that would be a
defense to a contract. Inability to consent (e.g. the party was
underage, incompetent, or just drunk out of his mind), irregular
proceedings, fraud, and duress are generally good defenses. Your story
touches on incidents that would be evidence for any of these defenses.
BUT (caps intentional, this is a really big BUT), a voidable marriage
loses its voidable character once it has been ratified. Florida takes a
simple enough view of ratification: if you consummated it, you ratified
it. Here you lived together with your putative spouse for ten years,
more or less; held yourselves out to be married, at least for the
purpose of immigration proceedings; and presumably consummated the
marriage (I think you would have mentioned it if you hadn't).
So my take on it is that you are not entitled to an annulment, at least
in Florida and probably elsewhere in the US as well. While your
marriage was highly irregular and under circumstances that would lead a
reasonable person to believe your assent was less than fully informed
and voluntary, this does not make it void. Florida will honor an
irregular marriage if it isn't illegal (incest, bigamy, or the like)
and the parties appear to have ratified the marriage. The fact that
Florida doesn't honor common-law marriages doesn't matter: you have a
marriage that was solemnized, however irregularly, and ratified by more
than ten years of conduct.
A Florida lawyer who handles family law will be able to give you a
definitive answer. There are lots of them on the Web; see, for example,
Florida Divorce Online
(http://www.fldivorceonline.com/flpages/Divorce/divorcerequirements.asp)
and Robbins Law Group (http://www.jcrobbins.com/). The above is just my
opinion, and it's worth no more than what you didn't pay for it. Since
this means a lot to you, you need a lawyer to take your side.
--
Not a lawyer,
Chris Green
|
| |
| |
Stan Brown wrote:
I believe you have misinterpreted this one. It is not a matter of
"marriage required to be in two languages"; it is a matter of a
person being unable to enter into a marriage when the ceremony is
conducted in a language he does not understand.
Maybe it's analogous to the situation in which one party to a marriage
(why can't I get Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra out of my mind here?)
is so drunk as to be incapable of understanding the proceedings and
thus giving genuine assent.
But I don't think it works for the OP. Marriages are analyzed more or
less as other contracts are. If you enter into a contract you don't
understand, that doesn't make it no contract: it makes it a voidable
contract that you can rescind if
(1) you do so timely, whatever timely means under the circumstances
(for example, as soon as Dennis sobered up, or as soon as the OP
realized he'd signed a marriage certificate and had a chance to contact
the US consulate); and
(2) you don't ratify the marriage (and Florida's rule is, you
consummated it, you ratified it).
Thus the general rule (which I believe obtains in Florida, which has
little statute law on annulments) that a voidable marriage can be
annulled if it hasn't been ratified.
The interesting question is thus whether the OP ratified his apparently
highly irregular marriage in the Ukraine. He brought his bride to the
United States and there undertook immigration proceedings to make her a
permanent resident; he's said so in other posts. In order to do so,
they would have had to hold themselves out as married in a manner
convincing enough that immigration officials would not find fault with
their marriage. (I don't know whether res judicata would now bar him
from asserting that she married him solely to gain immigration
privileges.) He enjoyed ten years, more or less, of consortium (and
nowhere indicates that the marriage was not consummated) before raising
any kind of objection. If that's not enough to ratify a (concededly
highly irregular and probably voidable) marriage, I don't know what
possibly could be.
--
Not a lawyer,
Chris Green
|
| |
| |
|
