MK Family Law

Mr. Adjei and the U.S. government filed cross motions for summary judgment in a recent case before the U.S. District Court for the EDVa.  On March 23, 2021, the court granted the U.S. government's motion for summary judgment, but denied Mr. Adjei's .   This case revolves around USCIS's denial of Mr. Adjei's 2014 application for naturalization.  The key argument used by the U.S. government to deny his application was that Mr. Adjei's wife was not legally divorced from her first Husband before she married Mr. Adjei, and therefore, his marriage, on which his application was based, is void.   Petitioner's wife married her first Husband in June 1996 in Ghana, lived there for three years before moving with her Husband to the United States, and, while residing in the United States, divorced that Husband according to Ghanaian law in April 2001.  This divorce involved the wife's father and the husband's uncle submitting declarations of the divorce, later confir...

The Kentucky Supreme Court addressed a Husband's request for a writ of mandamus to compel his family court judge, Judge Hagerty, to dismiss his Wife's petition for a divorce because he had already secured a divorce in Jordan.   For purposes of this blog, I am going to skip over the merits of the writ of mandamus arguments and whether Husband was entitled to one (note: he was not).  I do want to discuss the basic tenets of these simultaneous (or proximate) divorce proceedings in the U.S. and overseas.   In the case of Iqtaifan v. Hagerty , the court elaborated on the following facts.  Mr. Iqtaifan met his Wife and married her in Jordan in 2005.  They then moved to Kentucky, where they resided for the entirety of their marriage, and where both of their children were born.  In July 2017, the parties traveled to Jordan to visit family, and it was apparently during this timeframe where Mr. Iqtaifan pronounced talaq and commenced Jordanian divorce proce...

 Mr. Imad Jaffal sues the U.S. government for citizenship ( Jaffal v. Thompson ).  The underlying issue for whether Jaffal can be granted citizenship revolves around his parents' divorce, which occurred in Jordan.  Apparently, his father obtained a unilateral divorce from his mother in the shari'a court in Jordan.  The divorce was revocable and then turned into an irrevocable divorce after the requisite period of time passed.  Further, at the time of the divorce, both of Jaffal's parents were domiciliaries of the state of Ohio in the United States.  The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey concluded it could not recognize the Jordanian divorce, which was fatal to Jaffal's citizenship claim.  The divorce was unilateral and there was no evidence that Jaffal's mother had any notice of it, therefore it was not entitled to recognition as a matter of comity as it violated public policy.  Furthermore, it was, in all reality, equal to a "mai...

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals addressed a recent argument made numerous times before in virtually every U.S. state: if a couple is married overseas, particularly in a religious marriage ceremony, then the couple must also divorce overseas.  In the case of Melki v. Melki, the couple married in an Orthodox Christian ceremony in Lebanon.   The couple then began residing in Montgomery County, Maryland and ultimately the Wife filed for divorce years later in Maryland.  Dr. Melki, the Husband, fought the divorce, and among his numerous arguments was that Lebanon was the only appropriate jurisdiction that could divorce the couple ( i.e ., that Maryland has no subject matter jurisdiction).   As the Maryland COSA indicated,  "'[A]n essential element of the judicial power to grant a divorce, or jurisdiction,' is that one spouse be domiciled within the state at the time the complaint was filed. ...  A court must have jurisdiction of the res, or the ...