Wife searching for husband
Dear Mrs Macaulay,
I am trying to find my husband who is on another island, but he won’t give me his whereabouts for the divorce petition to be served. I am Jamaican, and he is also. I went through the process at the Supreme Court because of the no legal fee availability. How can I file for divorce if this person is withholding information about his whereabouts? Can I still get help to do so using the same Supreme Court assistance system?
As I understand your difficulty, you know that your husband is in another Caribbean country but you do not know his address there. At least I hope that this is the case, because if you know which island he resides in, then the problem can be easily solved. If you do not know which island he went to, then the problem becomes more complicated and more difficult to resolve, though not completely impossible.
You say that you went through the process at the Supreme Court because you did not have the money for legal fees. At least, what I understand is that you went to the legal clerk of the Supreme Court for help to prepare and proceed with your divorce for you because of your financial circumstances.
If I am correct that you know which island your husband moved to, then all that needs to be done is for an application to be made to the Supreme Court, and once your petition is ready for service, you would apply for orders to dispense with personal service, and for it to be substituted for the service to occur by way of advertisements in the main daily newspaper in the capital city or town where he is believed to be residing. The order will specify how many advertisements must be published. Copies of these publications must be filed as exhibits to an Affidavit of Service in proof of the fact that the order for substituted service was fully met, as ordered.
After this is done, your divorce proceedings can then head to completion, save that the same process for substituted service may have to be done for your Decree Absolute application to be completed.
I hope that you succeed in your pursuit of the resolution of settling your status to enable you to live your life unfettered by a marriage which has been abandoned by your husband.
I wish you and all my readers, and especially my editor and all the staff at All Woman, the Daily Observer, and all my clients and friends a Happy New Year which is full of hope, good health, love, peace, safety and a dignified life for all with full respect for all the human rights of each and everyone of us.
Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public, and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com; or write to All Woman, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.
