Opinion
B294536
03-12-2020
CHANDRE' D. SHELTON, Petitioner and Appellant, v. BRIDGETT SMITH, Objector and Respondent.
Chandre' D. Shelton, in pro. per. Bridgett Smith, in pro. per.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115. (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. 17STPB00425) APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Robert S. Wada, Judge. Affirmed. Chandre' D. Shelton, in pro. per. Bridgett Smith, in pro. per.
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A woman filed a petition for an ex parte order "judicially establish[ing] the fact" of her marriage to a man who had recently died, based on the fact that she and the deceased had exchanged vows in a 1996 ceremony. (Health & Saf. Code, § 103450, subd. (a).) The trial court denied the petition, concluding that there was no marriage at all because the couple had never obtained a marriage license. This conclusion was correct and supported by substantial evidence. Accordingly, we affirm.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
Consistent with the applicable standard of review set forth below, we state the facts in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling.
On a Saturday in October 1996, Chandre' D. Shelton (Shelton) and Kennedy Mitchell (Mitchell) exchanged vows before friends and family at a ceremony held at the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills in West Hollywood, California. Shelton and Mitchell had not gone to the Los Angeles County Clerk's Office to obtain a marriage license. They had not paid the chapel for any services relating to a marriage license. And the county has no record—public or confidential—that they ever obtained a marriage license.
In 2003, Shelton filed paperwork to adopt a child who was in the midst of juvenile dependency proceedings, and she was informed by the Department of Children and Family Services that there was no record of any marriage license. When Shelton asked the pastor who had officiated the 1996 ceremony about this, he replied simply that "God was the witness." Shelton took no further action at that time to obtain a marriage license, and adopted the child on her own.
In 2008, Shelton sued Mitchell for child support regarding the child she and she alone had adopted. Her claim was rejected, and she was again informed that there was no record of any marriage license. Again, Shelton took no further action regarding the marriage's legal validity.
On January 9, 2017, Mitchell died without a will.
II. Procedural Background
After Shelton and Mitchell's family got into a dispute over whether Shelton and her adopted son could attend Mitchell's funeral, and just 10 days after Mitchell's death, Shelton filed an Ex Parte Petition to Establish Fact, Date, and Place of Marriage pursuant to Health and Safety Code section 103540. Although the form petition stated that the petition process "cannot establish the validity of a California marriage if no marriage license was obtained" and had a space for the marriage license number, Shelton left that space blank.
One of Mitchell's sisters, Bridget Smith (sister), filed a written objection to Shelton's petition. Shelton filed a number of supplemental declarations in support of her petition, including one in which Shelton acknowledged her awareness of "the lack of a marriage certificate."
The trial court held a hearing on Shelton's petition in September 2018. Shelton and sister testified. In response to sister's testimony regarding the lack of any effort by Shelton to try to obtain a marriage license after the fact, Shelton testified, "Why would I go looking for a marriage license that I didn't have . . .? Why would I do that? Why would I go look for something that never existed?"
In October 2018, the trial court issued a six-page order denying Shelton's petition. Relying upon Estate of DePasse (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 92 (DePasse), overruled on other grounds in Ceja v. Rudolph & Sletten, Inc. (2013) 56 Cal.4th 1113 (Ceja), the court ruled that the Health and Safety Code procedure Shelton had invoked was merely "designed to cure a failure to register [a legally valid] marriage," not to cure defects with the legal validity of that marriage. A marriage is legally valid, the court went on to rule, only if a couple first obtains a marriage license because "a license is a mandatory requirement." The court found that Shelton and Mitchell had not obtained a marriage license. In making this finding, the court cited (1) the absence of any marriage license in the county's records, (2) Shelton's testimony that she and Mitchell had never gone to the county clerk's office to apply for a marriage license, (3) the wedding chapel receipt showing no payment for services related to obtaining a marriage license, and (4) the pastor's response, when Shelton asked him about the license in 2003, that "God was the witness."
After the trial court issued its order denying Shelton's petition with prejudice, she filed this timely appeal.
DISCUSSION
Shelton argues that the trial court erred in denying her petition because (1) the evidence showed that she and Mitchell had obtained a marriage license (and, thus, that their marriage was legally valid), (2) sister did not have "standing" to oppose her petition, and (3) she is Mitchell's spouse under the so-called "putative spouse" doctrine.
I. Denial Based on Lack of Marriage Certificate
Shelton contends that the trial court erred in denying her Health and Safety Code section 103450 petition because the court was wrong to find she and Mitchell had not obtained a marriage license. Her contention involves a number of subsidiary legal and factual issues. We independently review all of the trial court's legal conclusions (Leider v. Lewis (2017) 2 Cal.5th 1121, 1127), but review its factual findings solely for substantial evidence (20th Century Ins. Co. v. Garamendi (1994) 8 Cal.4th 216, 271).
A. Pertinent law
Today (as well as in 1996), a marriage is valid under California law only if the spouses-to-be (1) obtain a marriage license from the county clerk (Fam. Code, § 350, subd. (a); Burnham v. Public Employees' Retirement System (2012) 208 Cal.App.4th 1576, 1584 ["Prior to having a marriage solemnized, the parties must obtain a marriage license."]), and (2) solemnize the marriage through an exchange of vows during the 90-day window when the county-issued license is valid (§ 356; Chaney v. Netterstrom (2018) 21 Cal.App.5th 61, 68 (Chaney) ["The 'necessary step of solemnizing' the marriage makes the union valid."]). Completing these two steps, each of which rests upon the consent of both spouses, makes a marriage legally valid. (§ 300, subd. (a); In re Marriage of Left (2012) 208 Cal.App.4th 1137, 1145 (Left).)
Except when one of the spouses is in the military or is otherwise physically incapacitated, the spouses-to-be must appear in person before the county clerk to obtain a marriage license. (Fam. Code, § 359, subd. (a); cf. id. §§ 420, subd. (b) [armed forces exception], 426 [infirmity exception].)
All further statutory references are to the Family Code unless otherwise indicated.
What happens after the properly licensed solemnization "serve[s] a recordkeeping function." (In re Marriage of Cantarella (2011) 191 Cal.App.4th 916, 924 (Cantarella).) The officiant and witnesses are to sign the marriage license attesting to the solemnization (§ 422, subd. (b)), and the officiant is required—on threat of committing a misdemeanor—to return the now-executed license to the county clerk (§§ 423, subd. (a), 306, 307, subd. (a); Pen. Code, § 360), at which point the license becomes the certificate of marriage on the clerk's register (§ 300, subd. (b)). The failure to take these recordkeeping steps does not invalidate an otherwise legally valid marriage. (Chaney, supra, 21 Cal.App.5th at p. 67; Cantarella, at pp. 924-925.)
The petition procedure invoked by Shelton under Health and Safety Code section 103450 is aimed at remedying the failure to record and register an otherwise legally valid marriage. (DePasse, supra, 97 Cal.App.4th at p. 105; accord, Lockyer v. City and County of San Francisco (2004) 33 Cal.4th 1055, 1077-1078 ["The Health and Safety Code contains numerous additional provisions prescribing in detail the procedures governing marriage licenses and marriage certificates as part of the state's registration and maintenance of vital statistics."].) The procedure does not—and, indeed, cannot—cure defects that preclude a marriage from being legally valid in the first place. (DePasse, at pp. 95, 102.)
B. Analysis
The trial court denied Shelton's petition on the ground that her marriage to Mitchell was legally invalid due to the lack of a marriage license. As explained above, a petition seeking to establish the fact of a marriage under Health and Safety Code section 103450 must be denied where there is no legally valid marriage. (DePasse, supra, 97 Cal.App.4th at pp, 95. 102; Left, supra, 208 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1145-1146.) Also as explained above, a marriage is not valid if the spouses-to-be did not obtain a marriage license. (§ 300.) And the trial court's finding that Shelton and Mitchell did not obtain a marriage license is supported by substantial evidence—namely, that there is no record of a license, that Shelton and Mitchell never went to the county clerk to obtain a license or asked the wedding chapel to assist them, and that Shelton has intermittently admitted she knew they had not obtained a license.
Shelton raises what boils down to two arguments in response.
First, she argues that she presented evidence that she and Mitchell did get a marriage license. Specifically, she points to (1) the unsworn declaration of the pastor who officiated the 1996 ceremony, who said he had "signed the Marriage License[] Certificate," (2) the sworn declaration of the pastor's wife who said that the pastor had "signed off" on a "marriage license," (3) Shelton's own statement that she signed a marriage license at the chapel, (4) the lack of persuasiveness of the wedding chapel's receipt, and (5) the possibility that the license got "lost in the mail." Shelton is essentially asking us to re-weigh the evidence and to give her evidence more weight than the contrary evidence supporting the trial court's finding. This we cannot do. (People v. Brown (2014) 59 Cal.4th 86, 106 ["[w]e do not reweigh evidence"]; People v. Hicks (2014) 231 Cal.App.4th 275, 286 [court must disregard "conflicting evidence"]; see generally, Marshall v. Dep't. of Water & Power (1990) 219 Cal.App.3d 1124, 1141 [substantial evidence review requires court to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court's finding].)
Shelton also objects to the admissibility of the receipt, but that argument is forfeited on appeal.
Relatedly, Shelton proclaims that the trial court "arbitrarily became a witness on behalf of the county when it excluded" the possibility of the loss in the mail. A trial court's rejection of evidence does not convert the court into a witness for one party or the other. Further, Shelton's argument about losing the license in the mail misapprehends the process for creating a legally valid marriage because whether a license is lost in the mail after the ceremony has no bearing on whether a license was obtained in the first place.
Second, Shelton cites the evidentiary rule that "[a] ceremonial marriage is presumed to be valid." (Evid. Code, § 663.) But this presumption is a rebuttable one (id., § 660), and has been rebutted by the evidence indicating that Shelton and Mitchell never obtained a marriage license, which means their ceremony had no legal effect.
II. Lack of Standing
Shelton argues that sister did not have "standing" to object to her petition. Standing is a question of law typically reviewed de novo (IBM Personal Pension Plan v. City & County of San Francisco (2005) 131 Cal.App.4th 1291, 1299), and we reject her standing objection for two reasons.
First and foremost, the petitioning procedure Shelton invoked under Health and Safety Code section 103450 is an ex parte procedure. (Schmidt v. Retirement Bd. (1995) 37 Cal.App.4th 1204, 1210, 1212, 1214; DePasse, supra, 97 Cal.App.4th at p. 104.) As such, Shelton is the only one who needs to have standing. (Accord, In re Estate of Relph (1923) 192 Cal. 451, 458-459 [in a proceeding to probate a will, "there are no defendants in the sense of active parties litigant in th[e] proceeding"].) What matters in such a proceeding is whether Shelton carried her burden of proving a (1) legally valid marriage (2) that was improperly registered. As explained above, she did not carry her burden as to the first issue, and this is true whether or not anyone else participated.
Second, Shelton's objection to sister's standing is best understood as an objection to sister's intervention in the petition proceeding as an objector. However, even if we assume that the trial court erred in allowing sister to intervene under Code of Civil Procedure section 387, that intervention did not prejudice Shelton (Corridan v. Rose (1955) 137 Cal.App.2d 524, 531 [ruling wrongly allowing intervention must be prejudicial]; Cal. Const., art. VI, § 13) because she still did not carry her burden of proving her entitlement to relief.
III. Putative Spouse Doctrine
Shelton asserts that she qualifies as Mitchell's "putative spouse," which cures any defects in the legal validity of her marriage. The putative spouse doctrine allows a person who had a good faith subjective belief in the legal validity of her marriage to be treated as if she were legally married, even if she was not, to the extent she took actions in reasonable reliance on her belief. (Ceja, supra, 56 Cal.4th at p. 1122; § 2251.) It is undisputed that Shelton's initial petition under Health and Safety Code section 103450 did not raise the issue of whether she qualified as a putative spouse because she only sought relief regarding the registration of her marriage, not its legal validity. The trial court ultimately declined to consider whether Shelton qualified as a putative spouse because her "petition" sought only "to establish fact, date and place of marriage," and was not a motion "about . . . having putative spouse rights."
The trial court's refusal to entertain Shelton's putative spouse argument was proper for two reasons. First, Shelton never asked the court to amend her petition to include a claim for a declaration that she was Mitchell's putative spouse, and trial courts have no duty to amend a party's pleadings absent a request. (See Lee v. Bank of America (1994) 27 Cal.App.4th 197, 216 [so holding]; Conroy v. Regents of University of California (2009) 45 Cal.4th 1244, 1254 [same].) Second, even if we construe Shelton's mention of the putative spouse doctrine in some of her filings as constituting a request to amend and even if we overlook the potential impropriety of amending a petition in an ex parte proceeding to include a putative spouse claim that is normally adjudicated in an adversarial proceeding, the trial court still acted within its discretion in denying that request as untimely because (1) Shelton did not raise the issue in any filing until July 2018, which was nearly 18 months after she filed her petition and just two months before the trial, and (2) the amendment would have required the adjudication of issues (such as her good faith) not previously at issue in the litigation. (M&F Fishing, Inc. v. Sea-Pac Ins. Managers, Inc. (2012) 202 Cal.App.4th 1509, 1534 [trial court does not abuse its discretion in denying late motion to amend pleading]; Magpali v. Farmers Group, Inc. (1996) 48 Cal.App.4th 471, 486 [same]; cf. Rainer v. Community Memorial Hosp. (1971) 18 Cal.App.3d 240, 254; see generally, Code Civ. Proc., § 473, subd. (a)(1) [authorizing request to amend pleadings].)
DISPOSITION
The order is affirmed. Sister is entitled to her costs on appeal.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.
/s/_________, J.
HOFFSTADT We concur: /s/_________, P.J.
LUI /s/_________, J.
CHAVEZ