Estranged Husband Location Unknown

[clc88]

I was married for a briefly 16 years ago. It was an ugly ending with each of us going our separate ways. I would now like to officially divorce for personal closure but I am unable to locate him or any family members or friends in common.

Do I need him to get divorce? I was hopping to do an inexpensive "do-it-yourself" to save on costs. Does anyone know if this is possible? Everything that I have read involves both parties signing.

Any info would be grand.

[Jeff]

Hi clc88 and welcome to the divorce forums.

You don’t actually need your husband’s signature to get a divorce. However, you do need to serve him with the divorce papers so that he has notice that you’re applying for a divorce.

If you can’t locate your husband, you will need to make a motion before a judge for permission to proceed with the divorce without notice to your husband. Judges are pretty leery about granting permission for this. They don’t want to make decisions that affect people without those people having a chance to put forward their position on the issues.

To be successful at this sort of motion, you need to show the judge all the efforts you made to find your husband. Just asking around with friends and family isn’t normally sufficient. They need to be fairly comprehensive.

If your husband is still in Canada, unless he’s purposefully trying not to be found, it shouldn’t be too hard to locate him. Skip tracers are people who specialize in tracking people down, and you should get one to search for your husband. If the skip tracer tries hard to find your husband and can’t, that’s an additional piece of evidence you can put before a judge to try to get your divorce without notice to your husband.

[logicalvelocity]

Another idea is to post an advertisement in every major paper country wide to locate this individual. This could be used as evidence as well. They use this technique when it comes to settling of estates. The ads usually request anyone that has a claim against the estate or heirs to contact before such a date.