There’s a Hitch : Slow-Moving Divorce Complicates Wedding Plans

The groom had driven all the way to Santa Clarita from Kennedy, Tex. Their new home was ready in Provo, Utah. A big wedding reception was planned here next week.

So what could hold up the plans of Laura Molidor and James Linder to marry in Las Vegas this weekend?

To her surprise and exasperation, Molidor says, she just learned that she is still hitched to a man in Palmdale despite four years of efforts to get an uncontested divorce signed and sealed. Whether slow-moving court bureaucracy or a paperwork problem in Molidor’s lawyer’s office is to blame is the subject of dispute.

But as late as Friday afternoon, they were still debating whether to go ahead with the ceremony in Las Vegas--relying on assurances from the same lawyer’s office that, divorce decree or no, there are legal ways that may ensure later that the marriage is legal, not bigamous. “We’ve changed our minds at least six times in the last few days,” Molidor said. She and Linder were alternately fuming and laughing about the problem.

“I always said I wouldn’t marry a Mormon unless I could have more than one husband,” Molidor said in reference to Linder’s religious background. “But it might turn out that way after all,” she joked, acknowledging that she knows that Mormons no longer practice polygamy.

Molidor, 30, said she separated from her first husband four years ago and filed for what she thought was an uncomplicated divorce, with no financial or child custody disputes. After innumerable delays in getting a decree, she found a new lawyer, who assured her the divorce would be final in time for her to remarry in late October.

With that, she said, she finalized her wedding plans and told her beau, a 34-year-old businessman, to wrap up things in Texas and come out.

The couple were frustrated this week, however, when a representative of her attorney informed them that there were delays because the Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner in San Fernando who was to sign the divorce papers had been on a month’s vacation.

“If the courts have a backlog, they just ought to do a little overtime,” she said. Linder ruefully noted that his previous wife was granted a divorce from him only three weeks after she filed.

But a court clerk said Friday that Molidor’s petition was not submitted until Sept. 26, and then was rejected in mid-October because the papers were incorrectly prepared--a glitch Molidor apparently did not know about. New papers from the attorney were received Oct. 19.

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The attorney, James Reape of Santa Clarita, did not return phone calls seeking comment Friday.

Reape’s office advised them not to marry, Molidor said--but offered her an “out” if she does: They could take a chance on filing a nunc pro tunc petition after their wedding, saying that there was good enough reason for them to marry, which could protect the status of the marriage, she said.

Regardless of any weekend decision, Molidor said they planned to drive back Monday to Palmdale, where her current husband still lives with their two children. “I want to take the kids out trick-or-treating on Halloween,” she said.

Linder, who is on good terms with his fiancee’s still-legal spouse, added: “And if we do go ahead and get married in Vegas, we two men will be sitting around watching “Monday Night Football,” talking about our wife.”