Old Marriages Bloom Anew in Court Clerk’s Paper Jam

A move to tidy up the Orange County Superior Court clerk’s office may cause considerable disarray in the lives of nearly a thousand people who thought--mistakenly--that they were divorced years ago.

The clerk’s office is preparing to notify 974 people that their divorces were never made final. The unresolved cases were discovered recently in a purge of 30,000 old divorce cases sparked by a campaign to conserve space in the paper-crammed clerk’s office.

Eager to resolve the mysterious divorces that were never made final, clerks are now asking: Did the couples change their minds about divorce? Did they simply forget to file the final papers? Were they victimized by negligent lawyers? Will they be shocked to learn that they are still married?

The missing link in each of the 487 cases is that the couples--although they cleared the second-to-the-last hurdle in the divorce process, the granting of an interlocutory judgment--never completed the final step, the judgment of dissolution of a marriage, said Katie Nordbak, the assistant Orange County clerk.

Those who filed for divorce after July, 1984, are probably not affected because the Legislature streamlined the divorce process at that time and eliminated the interlocutory judgment step, Nordbak said.

Some would-be divorcees who heard of the clerk’s discovery panicked and flooded the office with calls, wondering what havoc the news would bring to their lives, said Orange County Clerk Gary Granville.

“Some said, ‘If I am one (whose divorce was not finalized), does that mean I’m a bigamist?’ ” Granville said.

“Some people were wisecracking. One guy wanted to know if that means he gets all his alimony back. Another guy (who is married to his third wife) said he wouldn’t mind taking his first wife back, but he wouldn’t want any part of his second wife.”

There is no need for panic, Nordbak said. Couples who wish to make their divorces final may do so by having their lawyers file papers asking a judge to grant a final divorce decree and to declare any subsequent marriage valid, she said.

But several attorneys specializing in family law said they would not be surprised if most of the unresolved divorces were left unfinished intentionally to take advantage of the tax and insurance benefits of marriage or simply to leave open the possibility of a reconciliation.

“I’ll bet about half the people they contact will know exactly the status of their cases and want it that way,” said John K. York, vice president of the Orange County Bar Assn.’s family law section.

Sheri Browning, 30, whose 1982 divorce petition was left open, said she and her husband kissed and made up six years ago. “We’re a lot happier than before,” she said.