“He’s making me pissed off”

During the days past the negative pregnancy test, Cherie started to open herself. She told me more of the details of her marriage with Andriej, her husband. Yes, still husband not ex-husband. She told me that very early that she had the daughter with Andriej and despite breaking up 3 years ago she was still officially married to him. For few reasons she was not able to divorce him. First of course were the financial issues involved, which prevented her to go into legal proceedings, the other were more serious. She was not able to travel to her previous country due to bad loan and basically a travel ban. Additionally, as of her origin she was not able to get divorce in her country due to the law prohibiting it. As the first two issues were pretty easy to solve with the repayment of loan, the third one was almost “no go”.

I started to explore the subject, not being a lawyer myself, but through years spent in the business, involved in legal aspects on the daily basis, I had some experience in solving different legal issues. After a research I found that even if she is not able to get divorce to be recognized in her home country, as being married to a foreigner, she had the advantage of the husbands home country court ruling. Actually she could get the divorce in his country and later by recent Supreme Courts decision from her country, such divorce must be recognized and based on that she should became divorced. The Supreme Court ruling based on a very similar case giving her opportunity to be free from Andriej. Based on that information I set a plan and contacted a lawyer firm in Andriej’s country in order to check how to proceed. Obviously the legal procedure was pretty easy, but required several documents from her and the husband.

Now it was her turn to convince Andriej about the idea of divorcing. It wasn’t an easy task, as he immediately became suspicious about a possible scam and the proceedings were not clear to him, as he was well aware that according to Cherie’s home country law, she could not get a legal divorce. Also he was afraid of courts ruling not in his favour, asking him to pay child support and alimony. Despite Cherie’s explanations, that she will cover all expenses and she is ready to withhold from alimony, he was negative to that idea. She became nervous and stressed. As with Giuseppe, every time she got involved in the conversation with Andriej she got stressed and pissed off. I don’t know how she survived with him so many years. Seeing her in this condition, I convinced the lawyer to call Andriej and in his native language explain the setup and proceedings. After that phone call he consented to the idea and sent the lawyers the required documents. Cherie vented out.

The only thing remaining was to clear her to enter her previous country, as she needed to sign the legal documents and power of attorney in the consulate of Andriejs country.