Oregon Divorce Legal Questions

OK what you need is an immigration lawyer. If your lady friend is presently in America, you can legally get married to her in almost any county, provided she has a passport ID. Once your marriage is complete, then you can file the necessary forms and documents in order for her to get a green card. Counsel in any state can represent you, and some of us charge a very affordable flat fee to handle the case from start to finish. My office processes cases all over the world, and I have a lot of experience handling marriage base green cards cases. ... Read More

The quick answer is that you can re-marry at any time after the formal entry date of the Judgment for Dissolution of Marriage. On a deeper level, it would be a good idea to hold off on getting re-married for at least a year or so get beyond the personal and emotional consequences of the now-ended marriage. This would be especially important if you have children by the first marriage because the kids are going to have some issues dealing with a new marital partner for either their Mom or their Dad.... Read More

If you are seeking a divorce and you do have a child with your husband, you need to have at least some basic provisions in the judgment covering custody, parenting time and child support. Also, while in Oregon you can agree to joint custody, that is usually a bad idea. The best approach would be to agree with your husband as to which of you should have sole custody of your child and how much parenting time the non-custodial parent should have. You can also reach an agreement for no child support given your husband's disability.... Read More

Assuming a proceeding for dissolution will be initiated by either you or your husband, disposing of his belongings would not be a good idea. When a dissolution is filed with the Court, there is an automatic statutory restraining order that comes into effect. This restraining order directs that both personal and joint assets need to be preserved until the Court can direct the division of the property and debt under the Petition for Dissolution of Marriage filed by the Petitioner (the party initiating the dissolution). The restraining order would apply to any personal property your husband brought into the marriage along with any and all assets you and your husband acquired jointly during the marriage (also all of your stuff). Best thing to do, consult with an attorney who has an office near the courthouse where the case would be filed and heard.... Read More

It sounds like your husband filed a petition for dissolution of marriage and related documents with the court but did not have you served with copies of those documents as required by law. If you go to the courthouse where the case was filed (in the county where he lived at the time), you can ask the clerk's office for a copy of the docket listing for the case which should list all of the documents filed. There should be a listing of a certificate of personal service filed fairly shortly after the original petition. Once he files the proof of service, you would have had 30 days to file a response to the dissolution petition but he could get a default judgment if you did not file a response because you did not actually get service of the petition and related papers. If that is what happened, you should consult with an attorney in the county where the case was filed. If all he got was a dissolution of the marriage and no property or debt issues were decided, it would probably be a good idea to leave it alone. If, however, he got title to the house, the car, your bank accounts or other assets you might want to file an amended answer in which you relate that you really were not served and the judgment was entered because of that fraud.... Read More

Well, that depends. If you bought the home while you were separated, your husband is not on title to the property and you used only your own separate assets to buy the home, I believe most courts would be inclined to treat the home as your separate property. On the other hand, if you husband is on title to the home or you used jointly-owned funds to buy the house, it could be determines to be a jointly-owned asset. On another point, even if you did make the original down payment with your separate property funds and you have made the loan payments from your own income while separated, if you did get back together and then started making the payments from a joint account held by you and your husband, the court could hold that a portion of the value of the property is jointly owned. The best way to avoid a problem on this issue is to insist on a written agreement with your husband before you get back together.... Read More

Much depends on where your sister and her husband lived during their marriage and immediately after. Under Oregon rules, any divorce proceeding (for dissolution of marriage) must be filed in the county where the petitioner (the person filing the action) has lived for at least six months prior to the filing. If he filed for dissolution, did not have her served, and then got a default dissolution decree, then she is divorced. If he just took off to another state and married someone else after he got there, your sister is still married and he could be charged with criminal bigamy. Your sister should check with a local lawyer on this.... Read More

It appears from your message that you have been married for right at six months and the only significant asset you have is the truck he took with him (no kids, I hope). You can file a petition for dissolution of marriage with the Circuit Court in the county where you have lived for the last six months. If you have not lived in one county for the last six months, you would have to file a petition for legal separation, wait until you have accumulated six months of residence in that county and then bring a motion to modify the petition for legal separation to a petition for dissolution of marriage. Once you have the Petition for Dissolution filed with the court, you need to make some documentable efforts to find your soon-to-be ex-husband and get him served with the Summons and Petition. If those efforts are not successful, we can apply for an order for service by publication. The Summons has to be published in a local newspaper for, I believe, right at 30 days. If he has not filed a response within 30 days after the service by publication is complete, you can submit a motion for entry of Dissolution of Marriage by default. When that document is entered by the court, you will be a single person again! As to the truck, I am assuming that you are on the loan as well as on title to the truck. One way to handle that would be to put a request in the Petition for Dissolution to award the truck itself to the respondent and grant you a money award against him for half the value of the truck. While it might take a while to track him down and attach whatever assets he does have to recover the amount due to you, you might be able to get the lender to take your name off the loan so you don?t have to have a bad entry on your own credit report.... Read More

This question could have some interesting consequences. First, if you were married when you separated in 1991, you are still legally married. In order to change that, you would have to file a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage in the county where you have last resided for at least six months and have your soon-to-be-former spouse served with the Summons, Petition and related papers. After he is served, he would have 30 days in which to file an answer or request an extension. If he does not file an answer or get an extension of time to file an answer from the Court, you can file a motion for default and then obtain a Judgment of Dissolution of Marriage By Default. There is another aspect of this, however. At the time you and you husband separated, did he have a retirement plan that he was contributing to and/or significant assets that he acquired during your marriage? If he was contributing toward a retirement plan, that means you could easily have a share of any retirement benefits he will be entitled to receive when he does retire. If he was contributing from some time before your original marriage and he continues to work in that employment, you could be entitled to a share of his retirement benefits that could be substantial. For example, If he started working and contributing to his plan in 1985, you got married in 1990, and he is still in that job, he would have 30 years in the plan and you would be entitled 50 percent of the benefits he accrued from date of marriage (1990) to 2015 or 25 years out of the total 30 years. If this is the situation, you need to consult with counsel ASAP.... Read More

While your lawyer told you that you agreed to the specific provision of phone contact at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday every other week, I do not believe you agreed to that specific provision when you only agreed to the non-specific provision in the judgment. As it happens, I believe you have a very good reason to challenge that provision in the settlement paperwork because 2:00 p.m. on any Wednesday during the school year is almost certainly during school hours so you get no contact at all. The main question here is, who drafted the settlement agreement after the settlement hearing? If there are more one-sided provisions like the telephone contact provision, you should ask your lawyer to schedule another hearing to resolve the new differences that have arisen after the original hearing. On another point, who is the parenting time coordinator and who pays for that person's services? It sounds like the coordinator works for the other party... Read More

It appears that you and your ex-husband are both on the title to the house and the loan secured by the house. In order for him to have taken your name off the loan, he would have had to convince the lender to release you from the loan obligation so he would be the only one liable for making the payments. If the lender did not think his credit record was good enough, they might have refused to agree to releasing you from the loan. I believe you need to consult with an attorney on this matter see what you can do under the dissolution judgment as entered, but you might want to check the status of the title with the County Clerk's office (get copies of the current deeds of trust and the latest deed) and check with a local broker to get an idea as to what the property is worth as opposed to the current loan balance. At that point you can make a decision as to whether you take the house back in your name alone and sell it or look into making a deal with the holder of the note to release the property without going through a foreclosure proceeding. On another point, if you see an entity known as MERS in your chain of title to the house, definitely take that to a lawyer. MERS is an entity that was acting as a representative of a large number of lenders and it was normally listed in the Deed of Trust as the beneficiary of the actual lender who was quite often not on the Deed of Trust. As MERS went through a bankruptcy a few years ago (and, I believe, never came out), the lender?s claim to an interest in the title to your house may not be valid.... Read More

Do you know where she is living now? If so, you could retain an attorney in the county where she lives, have him or her register your dissolution judgment as a sister state judgment in that jurisdiction and then collect on the spousal support obligation by attaching her assets and/or income through the procedures of that court. If your original petition for dissolution of marriage even mentioned attorneys fees, you should be able to collect attorney fees for the collection process as well.... Read More

If you know what town he lives in, you have all you need. After a dissolution of marriage has been filed, the next step is service of process. By personal service, you can have a sheriff?s deputy or an adult other than yourself go to his home and hand him the documents and then fill out a proof of service that gets filed with the Court. If you know that he lives in a specific town but you do not have an address for a residence or workplace, you can have the local newspaper to do service by publication which means the paper publishes a copy of the Summons ? Domestic Relations on a regular schedule for a 30-day period. If he does not file a response to the Petition for Dissolution within the time required, you can file a motion for default. Once the Order for Default has been filed, you can then file a Judgment of Dissolution of Marriage with the Court. When the Judge signs that document and it is entered in the Court record, you are done and no longer married. While the basic process is set forth above, you should contact an attorney in the county where you live to explain the process further and get it under way.... Read More

The answer to this question hinges on how the title to the house was transferred to you after your father?s death. If the executor of the estate transferred the deed to the property to you in your name alone, your coon-to-be ex would not have a claim. On the other hand, if the new deed transferred the property to you AND your husband, he MAY have a claim. You need to retain counsel and get an attorney on this ASAP.... Read More

In responding to this question, I am assuming that you do have an on-going action for dissolution of marriage pending in an Oregon court and that you do not have an agreement with your soon-to-be-ex to allow you to use the vehicle. When a dissolution has been filed, there is an Automatic Statutory Restraining Order that comes into play for both parties. The order provides that the parties cannot sell or conceal items of real or personal property or financial resources other than in the normal course of business without either an agreement with the other party or an order by the Court. If you need something like a vehicle for an important task (like getting to work or taking the kids to school) and you do not have an agreement with your spouse, you have to bring a motion to the Court for an order allowing you to use that item for the specific purpose you need it for. The motion would have to be filed with the Court and served on the other party after which he would have a specific period of time within which to file a response. If you file and serve the motion, and if he files a timely objection, the Court will set a hearing where you can explain to the Court what you need and why. If you do not have a lawyer at this point, you might want to see about getting one to pursue your case.... Read More

On those facts, the court would very likely determine that the family residence is marital property and that the parties should split all of the costs and proceeds of the sale. On a related point, you might want to talk to a tax accountant about possible tax consequences of the sale. Under some circumstances you might have a tax liability on your portion of the sale proceeds if you do not use those proceeds for the purchase of another residence. I don't think that would happen, but you should inquire about that before the sale goes forward.... Read More

The answer to your question is, That depends. Assuming normal jurisdictional rules like you would find in Oregon or California, you might be able to shift the overall jurisdiction from state A to state B, especially if you and the children have lived in state B for some time (in Oregon, that would be six months or more). On another point, when you reached a custody agreement, was that agreement entered as a custody judgment in State A or B? Also, has your wife moved to State B and been there for more than six months? I suggest that you consult a local domestic relations attorney in your current state of residence to get some real answers to these questions.... Read More

From the facts recited below, you have a really short-term marriage and I am not seeing any basis for either of you to argue that there has been any significant transfer of your separate property or her separate property to joint property status. If she were to try to assert that your 401K contributions were ?joint property,? you could assert that at least some of the profit she made on the sale of her home would be joint property because you were providing her with a place to live with her daughter in your house while she was going through the process of selling her home. The best approach for both parties would be for one of you to file a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage that alleges there is no joint property and no joint debt and all you want is a straight dissolution of the marriage. In that case, there would be no basis for opposing the petition because there is no defense to a married parson?s statement that ?irreconcilable differences have arisen in the marriage.... Read More

Your brother's girlfriend has no rights whatsoever to anything other than the personal property she had when she moved in with your brother plus whatever she acquired by gift or on her own after she moved in. If they had purchased a vehicle and taken title in their joint names, that would be different. In that case whomever was going to finish paying off the loan and keep the insurance active would get the car. The main issues here are the custody of the child, the amount of parenting time the non-custodial parent gets and the amount of child support the non-custodial parent has to pay the custodial parent. I would suggest that your brother needs to file a petition for custody, parenting time and child support with the local Circuit Court along with a motion for a status quo order that directs that the child stay where the child is now living pending a final determination of custody by the Court. While custody of a very young child will normally be awarded to the mother, that is NOT automatic. Your brother needs to see a family law attorney before she leaves with the child. On another point, if she is on his bank accounts or credit cards he needs to move his financial assets to accounts that are in his name alone. Also, if he owns any guns he needs to store them with another relative somewhere other than where he is now living. This would avoid giving his girlfriend the opportunity to make a false report of domestic violence in order to get him expelled from the residence under a domestic violence restraining order.... Read More

If your soon-to-be ex is not your daughter's biological father and he has never adopted her, he is not her father in any sense and you do not have to name her as a joint child in your Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. Further, he has no visitation rights whatsoever but he also has no obligation to help support the child (but her real Dad would have a right to seek parenting time and he has a duty to contribute to her support).... Read More

The divorce decree provides that your ex has to lay you 1/2 of his pension payments, but from your question it appears that he is not yet receiving any payments. If that is the case, I believe he does not have to make payments until he starts actually getting his pension payments. You should have you lawyer look into that and see if he can get the retirement administrator to speed up the process.... Read More

First, did you file the original Summons ? Domestic Relations with the Court along with the original proof of personal service or substituted service on your spouse, the respondent in the case? If that did happen, you can file a motion for default but the proof of service has to relate that she was also served with additional documents like the Status Quo order, CIF and Notice of Filing CIF (Confidential Information Form). If she did get served with all of the required documents then the Court should probably grant the motion for default. After that happens, you need to file a Judgment of Default with the Court which, when it has been signed by a Judge and filed in the Court records, means the marriage is over and you are divorced.... Read More

Your permanent resident status is granted by the federal government but you get to chose which state you reside in. As divorce (dissolution of marriage in Oregon) is governed by state law, you would have to meet the jurisdictional standard for the state where you live. In Oregon, at least the filing party would have to be able to allege that he or she has been a resident in the county of his or her residence for at least six months prior to the filing date. If you have both been residents of the same county for at least six months, so much the better. If you have children by your marriage, the children would also have to have resided in the same county for at least six months in order for the local circuit court to have jurisdiction to determine custody and parenting time for the non-custodial parent.... Read More

This question brings up some jurisdictional issues and we would need more information in order to give you some firm answers. First, how long have you been married to your husband, where did you get married, where did you live before you went to the UK and how long did you live there, and have you lived in Oregon for six months since you came back? I am also assuming that you had your kids before you got married to this guy and that you have no children with him. Under Oregon law, either party can petition the court in the county where they live for a dissolution of marriage on the ground that ?irreconcilable differences? have arisen in the marital relationship and there is no way to contest that allegation. In order to file such a petition, you have to have lived in the county where the petition is being filed for at least six months prior to the filing. Other jurisdictional matters come up when other issues have to be addressed like spousal support, division of marital property and debt and child custody and support (if there are children of the relationship). Basically, if your husband has never lived in Oregon and is now living out of this state, you can get a dissolution but the court would not have personal jurisdiction over him that would allow the court to determine support and property issues. Over all, if your relationship with your UK husband is really over, the best thing you can do is get a dissolution of marriage and move on with your life.... Read More

The best thing you can do is report his conduct to the District Attorney or Division of Child Support office that is in charge of your case. Whenever child support is ordered, that order requires the payor to make payments through the enforcing agency. If he is deliberately refusing to look for work so he can avoid making the payments, he can lose his driver?s license and face other sanctions. IF you were represented by an attorney in the original dissolution action, you might want to get that attorney back in the game so he can file a motion for contempt with the court that could impose significant sanctions.... Read More