I haven’t watched the movie for a while, but I recall Jim Carey (playing a lawyer) winning a divorce settlement case while he was stuck in the “tell the truth” mode - my question is about whether the writers scripted the legal conclusion correctly.
The case went something like:
There was a woman and man getting divorced, and they had a prenup basically saying she wouldn’t get anything (I think) in the event of a divorce. She wanted custody of the kids and a lot of support money - this prenup stood in the way.
Carey showed evidence that she was only 17 when she got married to her husband and signed the prenup; and as such the contract was not legal as she was a minor. Therefore the prenup was voided and she got everything she would normally be entitled to.
My line of thinking is that if she was a minor, acting on her own (not parental approval), that not only would the prenup be void but so would the whole marriage. Therefore would it not follow in real life that -since the marriage was illegitimate- she wouldn’t be entitled to any kind of support or have any rights since she was never legally married? Or would it have something to do with a commonlaw marriage and those kinds of separation rights?
This is all just from memory, as I don’t have my books here.
The marriage of a seventeen year old is probably voidable, but not void (depending on the state). Usually marriages are void ab initio in only a very few circumstances, like consanguinity. A marriage to a seventeen year old was possibly voidable (again, depending on the state) but lost its voidability through either the passage of a set time or subsequent cohabitation.
There is something called Common Law Marriage in many states. If you have lived with someone of the opposite sex for a long time (like seven years), the law considers you legally married even if you didn’t formally get married.
Liar Liar took place in California. The prenuptual agreement in question did not cover child support, only the estate. And incidentally, it stated she got nothing in the event of her having an affair, not in the event of a divorce. They had been married about 15-16 years.
That accords with my memory, with the additional proviso that the marriage is probably only voidable by the minor while she is still a minor, and would be ratified by her continued involvement after she turned 18. But that begs the question - why wouldn’t the prenup be ratified as well?
Ah yes… I thought I may have missed a couple points about the prenuptual agreement details - I remembered them providing evidence of her affair (:D), but not it’s relevence. Looks like I goofed a bit on the estate vs support thing too, oh well.
Still I guess it looks like the guy would be stuck with the verdict they showed in the film… the only other way I could think of for him to try to win would be something along the lines of going after her for intentionally misleading him into beleiving she was of legal age and that the prenup would hold; something along the lines of fraud… but it would probably be grasping at straws if valid at all.
The most important thing to note is that marriage law is not contract law. It’s governed by its own special rules. For instance, most contracts do not require a court to dissolve them; marriage does.