Bigamy & Spousal Support in Texas?

This guest post is from Rachel Barron, 3L Regent Law student and current Family Law student who plans to practice law in Texas:

“What is wrong with a justice system that allows [a convicted bigamist to enforce a temporary spousal maintenance order]?” That is a question to which Mark Athans needs an answer. After reading multiple news articles, reviewing online court documents, and the opinion from the 9^TH Court of Appeals in Beaumont, Texas, myself and many others working in the Montgomery County, Texas, family law courts would like to know exactly what a Judge was thinking during an enforcement hearing where Mr. Athans attempted to defend himself for failing to pay spousal support and attorney’s fees to his now former wife by asserting his wife was already married to two other men during their marriage. 

In 2018, Mark was ordered to pay Charity Parchem interim attorney’s fees, and spousal maintenance during the pendency of their divorce case. After that order was entered, and before the Judge rendered a Final Decree of Divorce, Mark discovered that when he married Charity in South Dakota in 2017, she was still married to at least two other men. Mark went to South Dakota, and in Cause No. 40DIV19-75, the Lawrence County 4^TH Judicial Circuit Court in South Dakota issued an Order for Decree of Nullity, declaring Mark’s marriage to Charity void. Charity was subsequently indicted for felony bigamy charges in Montgomery County, Texas, after which she pleaded guilty, subject to a plea bargain she entered with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.

The day before Charity’s guilty plea was entered, the Judge ordered Mark to pay Charity $34,000.00 as an enforcement of the prior order, and this after the Judge refused to permit the law enforcement officer investigating the bigamy case to testify regarding that investigation. When Mark subsequently failed to pay, the Judge threatened him with jail time. Mark appealed, and it took less than a month for the 9^TH Court of Appeals in Beaumont, Texas to place an emergency hold on the trial Judge’s enforcement order. On April 10, 2020, the Court of Appeals handed a strong reprimand down to Judge McDonald, ordering her to vacate the enforcement order.

 The full story is available here. Keep reading Family Restoration, as Mark’s case will be more fully examined in a thesis paper coming late Summer 2020 focusing on pre-nuptial agreements, marital property agreements, cohabitation agreements, and how those agreements present unique ethical challenges for Christian family law attorneys.