Van Vleck, TX Divorce Law Firms & Lawyers

I would contact the Plan Administrator for your prior Husband's Pension. Every Pension has their own set of rules. As a general rule, however, if your Husband did not elect to create a 'separate estate' for you under his Pension (there would have been a cost for this), then his Pension would have died with him. Pensions do not operate like 401k's.

You should get a California attorney to help you find out if you were divorced.  If you remarried while still married, you are committing bigamy.  Most of the time no one prosecutes.  But your current "husband" could raise it in your divorce, because your claim to community property is dependent on your being married.  You cannot be married to two people at the same time so your second marriage would not be valid. It would become valid upon your divorce to the first husband (if you are not already divorced from him). This is for general educational purposes only.

You have not stated which 'divorce papers' you mean. If the document you are thinking of is a Marital Settlement Agreement which he won't sign, a good way to move things off dead center is to ask the Court for a pre-trial conference, to determine the issues which are contested, and to schedule a trial. That usually gets things moving.