I read Patty Duke’s autobiography, where she states that when she was going with Desi Arnez Jr. and had a brief weekend with John Astin, she conceived their son Sean. Then she was in a panic and married someone named Michael Tell and got the marriage annulled later for non-consumption. Then she marriage John Astin, he adopted Sean and they had another son MacKenzie. Then she divorced John, married Michael Pierce, and they adopted a son, Kevin.
Sunday’ Parade magazine Q&A states that genetic testing proves that Sean’s biological father is Michael Tell. But the marriage was annulled for non-consumption. So how did that happen? And could this affect the annulled and Patty’s subsequent re-marriages?
Also, if a couple conceives a child, gets married, and never has sex again, could the marriage be annulled on grounds of non-consumption?
How could it happen? I assume that both parties agreed to the annulment. Since they both told the court there hadn’t been a consummation, the court took them at their word.
Effect? Well, I suppose someone who really felt aggrieved could have protested the ruling on the grounds of perjury. But until someone takes action to overturn the court’s ruling, it would stand and be valid.
I’m sure there are quite a few annullments based on non-consummation where the two people involved actually did have sexual relations. I’d guess that most judges don’t question the claims too strongly, as long as both parties are not contradicting each other. It is, after all, a difficult thing to prove unless a child is born.
What a stupid mistake. Especially for a vegetarian.
I am just amazed, because Patty Duke always insisted that John Astin was the father. I think Michael Tell, who she claims she married the day after she met him and left 13 days later, could file a HUGE lawsuit based on denying him his son. The child is now 30 years old, but I remember all the speculation about whether Sean was Lucille Ball’s grandchild.
Her book very specifically repeated the claim that she never consummated her marriage to Tell. In fact, she claims she married him knowing she was pregnant, and out of a combination of good-Catholic-girl-guilt (at being unmarried and pregnant) and the madness of a manic period in her manic depressive disorder. She starts out the chapter saying something like, “I was married to him for thirteen days, but if he walked in the room now I wouldn’t recognize him.” She also said that she paid off all his gambling debts, and that the marriage was thrown together in several hours.
If we take her at her word, then perhaps she slept with him before they were married. Although this, too, is contradicted by her book - she claims he asked her out and she refused… in fact, she goes into some detail about how he asked her on various date-type activites and it took her a whiel to realize she was being asked on an actual, romantic date – which, she then claims, she refused.
In any event, the speculation on Sean’s parentage was always between Desi Arnaz Jr and John Astin. However, Astin adopted Sean, and the couple was married when Mackenzie was born, so the legal parentage of both was definitively established, DNA being an unknown science back then.
Many years ago I used to work for a judge. Every uncontested annulment a judge grants after thinking about it for 5 minutes is one less dissolution (divorce) case that clogs up the court for years.
A woman who has a child and doesn’t know which of three guys is the father. Patty Duke recorded six albums, and Desi Arnez Jr was a member of Dino, Desi and Billy, so there’s the music.
What do you mean, it’s already been done? MAMMA MIA!
It depends on your state. In Virginia, if I remember this summer’s Bar review course accurately, it isn’t, although a refusal of one party to consummate might allow the other to void the marriage due to fraud. (Because by marrying, the refusing spouse promised to perform marital duties possible with the knowledge that s/he wasn’t actually going to do so.)
Actually in Virginia, a sham marriage (in which, f’rinstance, the man secures a false preacher who pretends to marry them but has no authority to do so) becomes valid upon consummation. (So that the bride doesn’t commit a mortal sin by accident.)