Chapter 13 - The Marriage Lasted Eleven Days on Paper
Adrian filed the dissolution petition four days after the wedding.
We considered annulment based on alleged fraud.
His recommendation:
Do not build the entire case around proving Miranda married solely to conceal a pregnancy.
Why?
Because we had intended marriage before the secret transfer.
The relationship had existed for years.
A fraud-based annulment would be fact-intensive and uncertain.
Divorce was straightforward.
The prenup addressed property.
No shared home purchased after marriage.
No significant marital accumulation in eleven days.
No wedding-gift war worth litigation.
We agreed wedding gifts would be returned where practical or donated when return impossible, following written accounting.
Miranda kept her personal property.
I kept mine.
The difficult issues were not marital assets.
They were:
Daphne’s safety.
My slap.
Miranda’s assault case.
The surrogacy dispute.
Future parentage of the unborn child.
We did not try to solve those through divorce settlement alone.
Different legal tracks.
Again.
Real life resists one dramatic courtroom.
Miranda moved into a luxury rental.
She was not financially dependent on me.
She had investments and a consulting business.
The prenup contained no large windfall for a marriage ending almost immediately.
She challenged one clause relating to wedding expenses, then withdrew.
By the time the divorce decree entered several months later, the marriage existed in my memory mainly as a white dress at the top of stairs.
But the son did not disappear with it.
He had his own timeline.
May you like
Children often do.
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