Ramah, CO Divorce Law Firms & Lawyers

All you can do in the legal area is file for divorce and have the legal issues decided by the court. If you are the sole owner on the vehicle title you can contact the police and file a complaint that the ex-wife has stolen the vehicle. After investigation, the police may or may not recover the vehicle. You could also hire a professional repossession service to locate, retrieve, and return the vehicle to you.

A party can proceed with a divorce even if they cannot find or serve the other party.  When you cannot find the other party, you must file a verified (notarized) motion stating that you have attempted to serve the party, your efforts, and last known address of the other party.  The court will hear the motion and may order publication of the petition for dissolution, meaning they publish it in the newspaper.  The other party has 30 days to respond or appear.  If they do not, the court will proceed with issuing a dissolution of the marriage.  However, the court cannot allocate property without personal service.  Therefore, you would, in practice, likely keep all of the property unless and until the other party shows up to claim some, at which point you could then have the court allocate the division of property if needed.

I can not give out legal advice, without knowing who I am giving to, without risking a conflict of interest. Direct contact eliminates these issues. However, here is some "Legal Information? (not advice) that may be helpful. Clearly, your Husband has done something to convince the Court that it has personal jurisdiction. The problem that creates, if the divorce proceeds, is that the Court could proceed without you via default. You do not want that. Okay, then, what to do? 1) File a Notice with the Court that you have not been personally served with divorce paperwork, nor have you signed any ?waiver of service.? Let the Court know your current mailing address and contact information. You can provide an explanation (just as you did in your question) as to the fact that you have been living in the same place (marital residence?) for eight years, and that you just learned about the divorce and haven't received any paperwork. If you have something that shows Husband did know your whereabouts, attach or reference it in the Notice. 2) Go to the Clerk?s Office at the Courthouse and ask to view your divorce file. This should tell you what/how you Husband did to convince the Court that it had personal jurisdiction over you (service by publication perhaps?). If you want to do this, make sure to go soon. If you try and do this in the day or two preceding your status conference, you probably won't be able to see the file, because it will be on the way to the Magistrate or Court Facilitator who will be handling the conference. 3) In addition to filing the Notice I referenced above, you could file a motion to dismiss. However, this will probably be a waste of time. Ultimately, if your Husband wants a divorce, the Court is going to give me one, even if he was deceptive in his original filing. 4) You should probably attend the initial conference - just so that the Court doesn't start to proceed without you. If you request it, the Court will require your husband to provide you with the proper paperwork, as well as any initial orders that the Court has already issued. The Court has the ability to give you additional time to file a formal response, and to start working on your financial disclosures (which are required in all divorces). The Court will probably reschedule the initial conference to accommodate this. 5) If you have a way to establish that your Husband did know where you were living or had been in contact with you (mail, e-mail, phone calls, etc.), I would collect and preserve it. Credibility is very important when dealing with the Court. If the divorce becomes conflicted and you need to have a hearing or trial, it will be helpful to show the Court that Husband has an issue with truthfulness in his representations to the Court. I hope that is helpful.