Urgent question re Divorce.

dug123

Sorry but I have deleted this thread

NAR

You can't ignore it as the divorce means that, unless your wife made a will, she died intestate. That means the children will inherit her estate and not you..

peachyprice

Was it the decree absolute you found? There are stages to divorce, it's possible that she may have got to the decree nisi but never finalised it.

Strange that she didn't mention it to you.

System

I didn't think it was possible to get divorced so quickly without both sides agreeing

Flugelhorn

I am so sorry to hear of your family's loss - what a shock also to find these papers, what were the actual papers ? As !!!!!! above says, it is usually needs both parties agreeing if it is done that quickly,

Re property / jt accounts - presumably if you own things jointly then they become yours ??

Seanymph

check the paperwork she has - as said above she may have filed the first part but not completed the action.

What does it actually say?

ellay864

I thought that even if one party doesn't sign the divorce papers there has to be proof they've been served with them ie they'd have to be delivered to you in person, not just post. If you really never saw anything about this are you sure that the divorce actually went through?

Voyager2002

As others have posted, the divorce papers should have been served on you for the divorce to be legally valid. Under the circumstances, we can be reasonably confident that the divorce was not valid. All in all, in your situation I would ignore the divorce papers, not mention them to anyone, and proceed as if you had never found them.

paddy's_mum

I find that I cannot agree that you should just disregard the paperwork you found and proceed as if you never found it.

If you do, and it turns out that in some way or other you were legally divorced, the whole thing then starts to reek of fraud and deception.

I bear in mind too that there is a minor child in this. If you take the estate, when perhaps you do not have lawful entitlement to it, you effectively 'steal' from your own children and I cannot believe that there would not be repercussions from that further down the line. At the very least, how will that child feel towards you if the truth were to come out at a later stage? The makings of a lasting family rift are perhaps being laid here.

Better always to be on the solid ground of honesty and know that by doing things by the book, your integrity and honour are unassailable.

I'm sorry for your loss and for such an awful shock. Good luck.

dug123

Hi, Thank you for your replies. This is not about money or estate, my wife was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer nearly 5 years ago and we always knew this day would come and so we prepared as best we could and she has no estate at all. Everything we have (which is not a lot) is in my name. All bills and assets have been sorted for quite a while.
My concern was more with things like the death registration which I signed yesterday as her spouse.
I think that because there are no financial implications and I could never be accused of being fraudulent for any personal gain that I should just continue as her husband as I have been for over 20 years.
I am going to ignore the document and when I am up to it I will take it out and have a study of it and probably burn it.
At the end of the day I am paying for the funeral and I am the one supporting our children and I will always continue to do so.
Thank you

Swampmonster

Sorry for your loss. Our thoughts are with you at this sad time x