I was told by someone that if you are married, but don’t know the location of your spouse, and are wanting to get divorced, all you have to do is run an ad in the newspaper for x amount of months stating that you are wanting a divorce, and if you get no response from your spouse, then legally you are divorced. She said this is how she got divorced, but I hear alot of urban legends coming from this woman, so I don’t know if I should believe it fully. So is it true? or at least in some states? (I live in Tennessee, by the way)
I’m sure it’s true in a number of states, but you’d have to check each state’s laws for info on where you have to run the ad, for how long, and what other efforts you have to make to find the person.
http://www.justiceforyall.com/docs/Divorce.asp
Here is some stuff on Tennessee Divorces
First, consult a lawyer who practices in your jurisdiction. This isn’t something you want to screw up.
I knew a woman some years ago in this situation. Her husband had moved out of the area, and couldn’t be easily found. According to her, her lawyer sent certified letters to the husband’s family, published notices in the newspapers where he was last known to be, published notices in the local papers where she still lived, and sent letters to his last known employer. I don’t know if all of those were required or if some were done for CYA. (There may have also been other measures that she didn’t tell me about, or that she forgot or never knew, but I think that was substantially it.)
It took six or eight months, but after that she was able to go to court and was granted a divorce even though he was nowhere to be found. So it seems it’s kinda true, at least in some places.
But talk to a lawyer. There are bound to be different rules in different places.
I’m not in a situation where I need to get a divorce, it’s just a question in general. If I needed a divorce, the first place I would go is a lawyer.
I agree, talk to a lawyer.
When my cheating ex-husband moved out, it was straight into his girlfriend’s apartment. Of course, I didn’t know where she lived, but was able to get the address from a mutual friend of ours. So that was where I instructed that the papers be served on him, but it seemed to take forever for any kind of response, and then when I showed up in court for the actual divorce, Asshole wasn’t there. I got my divorce no problem, but what I thought was really strange was finding out, when I met my lawyer in court, that Slut was the one who’d actually signed the papers when they were served.
Well, thank heavens that I was able to be rid of him without too much legal difficulty.
That is EXACTLY how I got my divorce from my first husband. We lived in California, but when I left him, I moved back to Las Vegas Nevada (where I grew up) I bought one of those “do it yourself” divorce kits for about $29.95 (if memory serves me right) He came into town with the promise of signing the papers, spent the weekend trying to talk me out of it, and, when I refused, left town. I had to file a new set of papers for about $50.00, which included the two newspaper ads (one for my city, one for his last known address local newspaper)
I held my breath when I went into court six weeks later, but he never showed, so POOF! I was divorced.
It has to do with desertion. If you can prove there’s been no contact in X amount of months, the court assumes you’ve been ditched and grants you a divorce. Not that I know for sure, but that’s what I hear.
The practice is called “citation by publication”, and is used in all sorts of civil suits, not just divorce. You’ve probably seen them in the “public notice” section at the back of your newspaper that nobody ever reads. Generally, you have to have exhausted all other means of personally locating and serving the defendant/respondant, have used due diligence in your attempts, and swear out an affidavit stating as much. They’re looked on with disfavor and will be ineffective in some instances, and a defendant/respondant often has a statutorily prescribed period in which to move for a new trial. They’re sort of a last ditch effort, basically “well, we’ve tried everything else, might as well put an ad in the paper.”