I discovered my ex was not divorced from his first wife until six months after we were married, but not until I was already separted from him. I used a divorce clinic to draft my separation agreement/divorce and brought this up. She told me that she didn’t think the marriage was legal. I thought “Great! Let’s get it annuled.”
She then told me it would cost me more $ because she would have to research case law - she had never seen this before. She then stated she didn’t think NC would allow me to annul the marriage because it would bastardize my children. I had to scrape the $ together for the divorce in the first place, so I left it alone and continued with the divorce.
My divorce was finalized six years ago. I have always wondered, though, if my marriage was not legal, then how was my divorce legal and could it come back to bite me in the butt.
I did some research a few months ago and found that both NC and SC (married in SC, but lived/divorced in NC) state that a bigamous marriage is the only marriage considered void from the beginning and it was not necessary for me to get a divorce. They consider me to have never been married. Children born into a bigamous marriage are nonetheless considered legitimate.
So, now my ex has filed a motion to modify custody. I will be in court soon. My original order states that we were married on X date and had two children born unto the marriage.
I am assuming the new order, when entered after court, will state the same. I don’t want to sign anything stating we were married on X date and that the children were born to the marriage, because I now know it isn’t true. I don’t want to sign an order that is a lie.
Thoughts?