the best way to handle facts is to give some history in the history in this case is basically the basic facts charles trowbridge was a surveyor in fact it wasn't even going to that's for thirty more years of hard work of charles trowbridge wind up wife number one files for divorce in january of sixty five charles never shows up to the divorce proceedings in fact he has defaulted in one nine hundred sixty five for divorce in those days divorce law was different than it is now there was an interlocking tory judgment that was given and the court ordered that the final documents be prepared by the only party that was in the court room linda trowbridge and the and no i think that linda trowbridge was given a piece of paper in a court room that said you are still married and that the only way for you to get divorced is to file the final paperwork she was represented by c charles trowbridge being in his early twenties or middle twenties at the time never showed up to that court proceeding so is the burden then placed upon little trowbridge's lawyer to on the pension plan well as we agree that the alan case says you know it's a private contractor and therefore the federal jurisdiction says whatever the whatever the private contract s there has to be some arrow pointed to wife number one that after thirty seven years the conduct of allowing three separate women to go forward with in quote sham marriage not to the woman's mind but in the mind of either charles were in the mind of wife number one this gets the equity principles of clean hands she is allowed now for my client to be married to a gentleman for almost twenty years go through a state planning go through picking choices with a pension of do we accept a lump sum or do we take it in payments she goes through this whole process her twenty year relationship marriage took over a twenty year are the lawful spouse or the legal spouse pursuant to their own internal mechanisms they require the pension required that anytime you change it does ignition of beneficiary was required that you have to the pension that you penned of your divorce papers and that means that when judy became the does it now does it needed to fish marry he had to show that he was divorced from wife number any way over thirty seven years to finalize her divorce and it was not finally divorce well obviously this is why we're here is that there was no final  very simplistic fifteen dollar motion at the courthouse and reversed this problem and not lost out on a two hundred and thirty thousand dollars pension it was such an easy act just how can you  question about that but your arguments really go to the equity and i didn't just curious what california court california court of appeal opinion or california supreme court case says in this particular occasioned by pensions who follow their own internal mechanisms and then be told later that she has no status and ireland to less than two minutes if you wish to reserve you may or you can continue well i  wait for thirty seven years three marriages to go forward what property as an unmarried woman collected child support collected alimony in her mind you know we have to look at what  five that said they're still married we don't know for a fact of charles got that document was contacted by the attorney but we do know one thing the judy trowbridge the innocent good faith spouse has determined there's no no no conclusion any other way that she thought she was very the child for over it should not be left out as legal versus punitive california has tried its best to try to avoid these circumstances by getting the pun spouse closer to the legal spouse status and it has done it in the section cases it's done in property cases and now i'm asking because this falls under your jurisdiction for you to somehow find thank you for the privilege of being here i've never been here before i'm very nervous this is a private matter you said look first of all just introduce yourself for the record i'm john adler thank you i never thought that as i closed my thirty five years of family law practice that i would be here arguing something so that in any way here i am i think one thing that we forget is that there is a finding by the superior court of the county of los angeles that charles in linda never linda who knew that she was not the worst charles knew he was not divorced that was clear in the case where there was an attempt to have a good marriage finalize tung gale testified and she begged charles to get a divorce from linda which he refused he refused to do it you know he was married to her that can be seen on that be seen on the beneficiary statements he signed with the pension bearing all these women i mean i don't think linda really had the power to stop charles from doing anything charles knew fully well you was he was mary if you wanted to be divorced from her he certainly could i don't see this is a unique case i see this is i have looked up every case that has been cited by opposing counsel and i cannot see that there is any case contrary to what the district court judge found i've read them all and all of them stand for the principle california community property laws require that the putative spouse gets an interest in judy did get that interest she thought just exactly what she was entitled to under california law so i really don't have anything