COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA Present: Judges Beales, O’Brien and Malveaux Argued at Richmond, Virginia UNPUBLISHED MICHAEL J. WILLIAMS, JR. MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY v. Record No. 0466-18-2 JUDGE MARY GRACE O’BRIEN DECEMBER 4, 2018 CARMEN B. WILLIAMS FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF CHESTERFIELD COUNTY David E. Johnson, Judge Jessica C. Boutwell (Cordell & Cordell, on brief), for appellant. Dawn M. South (Law Offices of Deanna D. Cook, PC, on brief), for appellee. Michael J. Williams, Jr. (“husband”) appeals a final order granting Carmen B. Williams (“wife”) a divorce. Husband contends that the court erred by denying his request for a continuance and striking the evidence in support of his pre-trial motion to declare the parties’ marriage void ab initio. He also asserts that the court erred in refusing to find the parties’ marriage void ab initio. Finding no error, we affirm. BACKGROUND Husband and wife married in New York on April 15, 1988, and moved to Virginia in 1991. Wife’s previous marriage in Peru ended in divorce. A Peruvian court entered a divorce order on December 15, 1987. When wife applied for United States citizenship in 1994, she and husband learned that the Peruvian divorce order had been appealed and was ultimately affirmed on May 24, 1988. Despite initial concerns about the validity of the parties’ marriage because of the divorce * Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, this opinion is not designated for publication. appeal in Peru, United States immigration officials granted wife citizenship. Wife understood that she received citizenship “on the basis that [she] was married to [husband].” Wife filed for divorce on March 31, 2015.1 Husband filed an answer on May 18, 2015, but moved to amend his answer and assert a counterclaim on August 11, 2017. In his motion to amend, husband argued that wife “was still validly married to another person on April 15, 1988, rendering any supposed marriage between [the parties] on that date void.” Following argument at a September 14, 2017 hearing, the court allowed husband to amend his pleadings to include his counterclaim that the marriage was void ab initio. Husband advised that he had been consulting with Peruvian attorneys and intended to produce a memorandum in support of his position. The court set an evidentiary hearing on the issue for November 14, 2017. At the outset of the hearing, husband indicated that he was ready to proceed. He argued that under Peruvian law, wife’s divorce decree entered on December 15, 1987 was suspended pending an appeal. He asserted that wife’s divorce did not become final until the decree was affirmed on May 24, 1988, a date after the parties’ April 15, 1988 marriage in New York. Husband introduced two exhibits. Both were Peruvian documents, written in Spanish, from wife’s 1994 citizenship application. Wife had obtained them from the U.S. government and produced them to husband in discovery. Wife identified Exhibit 1, which was partially handwritten, as a non-judicial document containing information about wife’s marriage and divorce in Peru. She identified Exhibit 2 ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals