Judge Stalls Woman's Divorce From Abusive Spouse

Sun Jan 9, 7:55 AM ET
Los Angeles Times

By Sam Howe Verhovek Times Staff Writer

 SEATTLE — The day she was granted a divorce from her abusive husband, Shawnna J. Hughes said, was "the happiest day of my life." But barely a week later, the 27-year-old medical assistant was back before a judge, who rescinded the order after learning Hughes was pregnant by another man.

 "Not only is it the policy of this court, it is the policy of the state that you cannot dissolve a marriage when one of the parties is pregnant," Superior Court Judge Paul A. Bastine told Hughes on Nov. 4.

 The ruling has provoked outrage among women's rights groups and provided ample fodder for local talk-radio hosts and newspaper columnists.

 Experts said there was no blanket prohibition in the laws of this or any other state against pregnant women getting divorced; several Seattle-area family law practitioners said that they had obtained divorces for pregnant clients.

 The law states that any Washington resident who files for a no-fault divorce may get one. Hughes' husband did not respond to her petition, and a divorce was granted. But Bastine said the divorce was invalid because Hughes did not learn she was pregnant until after the papers were served, so her husband was not aware of all the facts.

 Hughes is appealing Bastine's decision.

 The judge said in a telephone interview that the case involved a thicket of other legal issues — especially because she was receiving public-aid benefits, and the state had an interest in determining paternity.

 But several legal scholars questioned his reasoning, saying that the law provided for paternity issues to be settled separately from a divorce. In Washington, a child born as many as 300 days after a divorce is legally presumed to have been fathered by the ex-husband unless a paternity test proves otherwise. Hughes said she and the man with whom she became pregnant planned to have such a test after the birth.

 "I cannot think of any policy that would require this woman to stay married to a person who was in prison for abusing her," said Carol Bruch, a law professor at UC Davis.

 In any event Hughes, who lives in Spokane and is due to give birth in March, remains married to her abuser — a situation she describes as psychologically devastating. She said her six-year union with Carlos Hughes was "more like a prison than a marriage."

 When she got pregnant in June, Hughes said, her estranged husband was serving time for domestic assault. She said she has had no contact with Carlos Hughes, who recently was transferred to a jail in Montana to await trial on federal drug charges, for two years.

 But, she said, her husband called her grandmother from the jail and told her that he was taking the pregnancy as "a sign from God" that the couple should be together. "It made my stomach turn," Shawnna Hughes said.

 Although there is a restraining order preventing Carlos Hughes from initiating any contact, Shawnna Hughes said she was terrified by the prospect of him coming back.

 She has custody of their two boys, ages 5 and 3.

 The American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) and the Northwest Women's Law Center, an advocacy group in Seattle, have joined in Shawnna Hughes' appeal. If the ruling is upheld, they say, it not only amounts to discrimination but also could establish a perverse incentive for an abusive husband to get his wife pregnant in order to force her to stay married. And it could prompt some women to terminate their pregnancies to obtain a divorce.

 "You can't use a woman's status as a pregnant person to discriminate against her," said Lisa Stone, executive director of the women's law center. "You simply can't say, well, everyone else in the state is entitled to get a divorce in a timely fashion, except this one group of people."

 Bastine, who retired Friday after 10 years on the bench, is well-regarded among family-law practitioners in Washington state, known for his efforts to expand access to legal services for low-income clients and his pro bono work, among other things. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil, he served as chairman of the Spokane Legal Services Board before he became a judge.

 


 Some lawyers expressed puzzlement over his blanket statement that pregnant women could not get divorced.

 "My personal view is that what Judge Bastine did is not necessary under the law," said J. Mark Weiss, a Seattle lawyer and former chairman of the state bar association's family law committee. "In this type of situation, forcing her to remain married, that's a real problem."

 Further roiling controversy in the case, Bastine told Shawnna Hughes that she had forced a prolongation of her marriage on herself with the "intentional act" of getting pregnant.

 "You have created the situation by your own actions that delay your opportunity to dissolve your marriage," he said in the Nov. 4 hearing.

 Getting pregnant with a friend from her high school days was unintentional, Hughes said, the result of failed birth control.

 Regardless, said her lawyer, Terri Sloyer, the standard right to obtain a divorce after the 90-day waiting period should not be affected by a pregnancy.

 "What are we telling women here?" Sloyer said. "We're not living in 15th century England."

 Carlos Hughes did not return requests for comment submitted to him at the detention center in Montana. A reporter for the Stranger, an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle that first wrote about the case, met briefly with Hughes last month. But he declined to discuss the controversy, saying: "I want to talk to Shawnna first."

 Shawnna Hughes has a houseful of responsibility, with her two young sons as well as her own brother, 8, and sister, 16, whom she looks after. She has said that she and the man she says is the biological father plan to name the child they are expecting Jazmine Aurora.

 Asked whether she had any wedding plans, Shawnna Hughes said, "Oh, I just don't know about that.

 "With everything I'm going through right now, I don't know if I ever want to get married again."