catswhiskers

My fiance's lawyer sat on his divorce papers for a month and now we are off schedule with apply for the K-1 visa. He originally said that the final decree would take between 7-10 days to get the court/judge to grant it but worse case scenario 4 weeks. My fiance spoke to the lawyer today (it's now three weeks since the document went to the court) and he said he checked last Friday and that it's in the judges chambers and should be finalised by the end of next week. Now we are even further away! I said to my fiance isn't there a way that he can check with the court himself - surely the lawyer should be able to tell him who to talk to and where. I did this in the UK for my divorce absolute. Does anyone have any experience of this in the US. It was an no contest amicable divorce so very simple.

Mr K-1 Visa

I honestly think you need to contact someone who is a lawyer or some para
legal. I had to get a divorce and an annulment taken care of before I could
file the K-1. I had a big head start on the divorce, but the annulment was
something I did last minute. To get to the point. The annulment is fast once
the paperwork is done and you have both signatures of the parties.
But.....Divorce is different... Many states have a six month waiting period
before granting final divorce. Some states have a 90 day wait. This is
legislation that was enacted to try to give couples time to come back
together- reconcile... doesnt help those in a hurry. I dont think there is
but one or two states that have a 30 day wait.. I am not sure about this so
you have to check. I can be wrong... but I do know for a fact that many
states will take 90 - 180 days to process. That is while I cancelled divorce
proceedings and changed to an annulment.

What state is your fiance in and I can tell you how long it will take and
give you the web site that will have that information


"catswhiskers" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > My fiance's lawyer sat on his divorce papers for a month and now we are
    > off schedule with apply for the K-1 visa. He originally said that the
    > final decree would take between 7-10 days to get the court/judge to
    > grant it but worse case scenario 4 weeks. My fiance spoke to the lawyer
    > today (it's now three weeks since the document went to the court) and he
    > said he checked last Friday and that it's in the judges chambers and
    > should be finalised by the end of next week. Now we are even further
    > away! I said to my fiance isn't there a way that he can check with the
    > court himself - surely the lawyer should be able to tell him who to talk
    > to and where. I did this in the UK for my divorce absolute. Does
    > anyone have any experience of this in the US. It was an no contest
    > amicable divorce so very simple.
    > --
    > Posted via http://britishexpats.com

catswhiskers

Thanks for your reply. He is doing his dovorce through a lawyer and has already been through the 90 day wait (which is required for PA). He's just waiting for the court/judge to give him the final paper to say he's divorced. Just wondererd how long the wait was for that not for the whole procedure (he's done all that).

Dekka's Angel

Umm.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but if your lawyer deigned to call a judge's chambers to say "hurry up" issuing a court order where life and death (or physical or grave economic harm, at least) itself was not at stake, that lawyer would quickly find his success rate with that judge (and probably all that judge's colleague judges, too) taking a bit of a plummet long after you are gone from that lawyer's life. I doubt you are paying him enough to justify that. Bluntly, I wouldn't hire a lawyer that was that stupid.

Your fiance will look even stupider if he does it. And get no better results.

In case you didn't know this (and obviously you didn't, or you wouldn't be sweating this), judges are generally quite busy. They hear cases all day, then work after the court day ends on paperwork. The fact that your divorce paperwork is in the judge's chambers means it will be dealt with, as the judge gets to it, based on the judge's own assessment about what's more or less important to handle on a particular day. Nobody but another judge can or should ask with a straight face that a judge "hurry up", outside a genuine emergency, because it implies that somehow you know better than the judge what should take priority.

I just got done waiting 2 months for a paper order for a client who actually did have real life-or-death issues about needing it, who had already *won* at the hearing and it was only the question of the judge's signature. The one time I deigned to call twice in a week at my client's insistence, I got an earful from the clerk - and I am convinced bought an additional 3 weeks delay for my trouble.

My advice is to have your fiance's lawyer (not your fiance) call the judge's chambers in 2 weeks if that is authorized by local rules and you still don't have your decree. With a *gentle* inquiry to the judge's clerk. If that doesn't work, then a gentle inquiry every week or so is about all any sensible person should do, because you simply cannot make that judge move faster than that judge wants to (short of a writ of mandate, but that's anohter subject entirely and you don't even rate on that scale yet). If things get really bad (and your passion about your divorce and your I-129F is not, in judge terms, "really bad"), your lawyer can appear before the judge ex parte after a few weeks, and see if that gets your decree signed.

catswhiskers

Thanks for that but I am not really that naive to realise that judges aren't busy, it's just that it took 10 days to get my absolute in the UK (after I asked about it) and I was the one doing the chasing. It's obviously done differently in the US. I wasn't thinking of ringing up every 5 minutes but the lawyer has let us down in the past and we just want to make sure the documents actually went to the court when he said they did. He keeps changing the goalposts. Surely not every one uses a lawyer in the US and there must be some people that do it themselves (as we do in the UK) and they can obviously make gentle enquiries.

Folinskyinla

Hi:

Every court is different and their procedures are different.

I just finished an objection to a Magistrate Judges Recommendation regarding a Habeas Corpus petition I'm attorney in . The recommendation indicated that the MJ had no concept at all how the immigration system worked -- he conflated the separate [former] INS with the Immigration Court and it was apparent he took a visceral disliking to my client. So my objection had to twice as long as I liked because I had to firmly but gently explain the underlying system. I started off with "This is an immigration case" followed by of the more recent JUDICIAL quotes of how hard it is for JUDGES to understand the immigration & nationality act.

As the case involved some complicated issues of civil procedure I was able to bring up the 20th Century's gift to Civil Procedure Law Professors -- the personal life of Charlie Chaplin. In case you are interested, look up the 1927 California Case of Chaplin v Superior Court and 1946 case of Berry v Chaplin.

Listen up ladies! Be careful of these Englishmen.