This doesn't involve me, and I don't need an answer, but I have gotten
curious. Two people I know, call them Joseph and Rosa were married in
New York in 1970. Neither, at the time, was a citizen of the United
States. They lived together, bought real estate and made investments
together until about 1990. Since that time Rosa has been living in
California in a house jointly owned by them, and has since become a US
citizen while Joseph has been living in Asia, and remains an Australian citizen. The relationship between them has not been good, but it was
grudgingly cooperative.

For estate tax reasons, Rosa would now like to divorce Joseph so that
assests can be clearly hers in California and his out of the US. That's
the easy part.

The tricky part is, I think that grudging cooperation has broken down.
He has moved from Singapore apparently to Philippines, without providing
her with a forwarding address apparently some time last calendar year.
He changed his phone number and email address in the process. I don't
know how phone number portability works across borders, likely he
wouldn't try hard anyway. And his email had been with his last employer
in Singapore but now is some random Philippine ISP. Joseph has been non-responsive to Rosa, and only vaguely responsive to their kids.

So my question is, how do divorces work with uncooperative people living
in parts unknown? Do they just not work?

(Small further background, for as long as I can remember, Rosa has been
filing taxes as "married, filing separately" and, for at least the last
few years, I think has been preparing his IRS taxes and sending the
forms to him to sign and mail. I don't know if that will continue.)

If I had to guess, Joseph wanted a divorce decades ago, but Rosa didn't,
and now that she does, he's feeling spiteful.

Elijah
------
Joseph also owns, on his own, real estate in Australia

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Ugh, what a mess.

He changed his phone number and email address in the process. I don't
know how phone number portability works across borders, ...

Not at all. Perhaps the kids can get some contact info for him.

(Small further background, for as long as I can remember, Rosa has been >filing taxes as "married, filing separately" and, for at least the last
few years, I think has been preparing his IRS taxes and sending the
forms to him to sign and mail. I don't know if that will continue.)

If he's neither a US citizen nor resident, why would be need to file
US taxes? Does he have US income?

So my question is, how do divorces work with uncooperative people living
in parts unknown? Do they just not work?

It's possible but can be complicated and it depends on whether there
are assets to divide, whether there are minor children, and so forth.
If she wants to get divorced, she needs to find an actual California
lawyer who is familar with the law that applies to her, and not depend
on guesses from us.

Here's a web page with some general info about divorcing an
uncooperative spouse.

https://trucelaw.com/uncooperative-spouse/

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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In misc.legal.moderated, on Mon, 13 Feb 2023 20:44:45 -0800 (PST), "John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

Ugh, what a mess.

....

So my question is, how do divorces work with uncooperative people living
in parts unknown? Do they just not work?

It's possible but can be complicated and it depends on whether there
are assets to divide, whether there are minor children, and so forth.
If she wants to get divorced, she needs to find an actual California
lawyer who is familar with the law that applies to her, and not depend
on guesses from us.

Here's a web page with some general info about divorcing an
uncooperative spouse.

https://trucelaw.com/uncooperative-spouse/

Thanks so much. This seems to have all I need to know to divorce a
no-good deadbeat missing wife.

I'm saving the link until I get married.

--
I think you can tell, but just to be sure:
I am not a lawyer.

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On Monday, February 13, 2023 at 6:02:52 PM UTC-6, Eli the Bearded wrote:

So my question is, how do divorces work with uncooperative people living
in parts unknown? Do they just not work?

I understand the principal mechanism by far for such situations is to serve notice to the uncooperative spouse "by publication." Once a judge is satisfied that the spouse wanting a divorce has done all possible to reach the uncooperative spouse, I would expect the judge to grant the divorce.

I am not an attorney. I am just aware of the power of service and notice through "publication" (as in taking out an ad in a newspaper). I expect specifics depend on the state.

Stuart or one of the other real attorneys here can fine tune this as interested.
I am just saying: It's do-able and I figure, done a lot.

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