MARRIAGE AFTER DIVORCE CHALLENGED IN LONE STAR STATE

BY PETER BRADSHAW
June 13, 2002

Second marriages in Texas may not be legally valid, according to attorney Edward Truncellito, 52.

Truncellito's law license was suspended in December, 2000, after he filed a $7.5 Billion lawsuit against the State Bar of Texas, in which he alleged they distorted the true legislative intent of Texas No-fault divorce. Truncellito says the result of this problem is that every Texas divorce granted without mutual consent is invalid, and subsequent remarriages are also invalid.

It is not just Truncellito that has a problem with the no-fault divorce statute. "It violates the state constitution, according to Justice Kern Thompson Frost, in a 23-page minority legal opinion on November 21, 2001, at Houston's Fourteenth Court of Appeals," Truncellito said in an exclusive interview with Houston's Forward Times. The briefing was done by Law Professor Herbert Titus.

But the other two Justices prevailed. "The case went on to the Texas Supreme Court,
but they refused to resolve the disagreement between the justices," Truncellito explains. He charges that "the Texas Supreme Court is involved in a cover-up."

"They heard about my claims two years ago," he says. "In fact, it was their committee who suspended my license in retaliation for the lawsuit I filed."

Coincidentally, the State Bar is also being reviewed for sunset at next year's legislature. "The State Bar is an agency of the Supreme Court, which controls all the rules and can take away law licenses in secret committees with sealed records," as they did with Truncellito. "The State Bar is a guild of lawyers with a monopoly. Unauthorized Practice of Law is a third degree felony under the Texas Penal Code."

Three million Texas no-fault divorces have been issued since 1970. Can that much water over the dam somehow flow back upstream? But Truncellito says, "That is not the main problem. Most divorces will probably not be invalidated, but the threat to invalidate will give leverage to change child support or custody where those arrangements are disagreeable. If the divorce is void, so are those orders."

The front cover of the November 2000 Texas Bar Journal announced a billion dollars outstanding in unpaid child support. "This kind of money-motive could easily fuel the issue." Truncellito says that when the fraud is exposed, anyone with a divorce in their past or their spouses' past should have the divorces legally confirmed with full disclosure of the fraud, so that relationships can stabilize.

"Furthermore, the costs and woes of divorce have now become irrefutable, and many churches might instead endorse such voiding of divorces, and help to reconcile the marriages."

"The Catholic Church teaches that divorce begins the slippery slope to promiscuity to contraception and then to abortion, all of which they strongly oppose."

Judith Wallerstein's Book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce became a bestseller last year, and she appeared on Oprah Winfrey twice because so many callers agreed their childhood had been shattered when their parents divorced.

No one argues any more about what’s happened to marriage, but no one does anything. The Divorce Industry is profitable, bringing in $200 Billion nationwide each year. But in Texas, only six percent of the state's 69,602 lawyers are registered in the Family Law Section.

Truncellito claims he found a smoking gun in a 1974 Texas Tech Law Review article by Joseph McKnight, which says the new no-fault law was for "uncontested" divorces only. For Truncellito, the big mystery all along was: "Why would the 1969 Texas Legislature use 48 words in the no-fault statute — and still have seven divorce statutes on the books — if they just meant to say, 'anyone who wants a divorce gets one?'"

It did not make sense to Truncellito who had scored in the top one percent on the Law School Admissions Test. So he researched the subject 1,500 hours and pieced it together. He found that "no-fault" originally meant "no-fight" or "no-contest," and the law was not being applied the way it was intended. Truncellito knew he had accidentally stumbled onto something with a potential ramification bigger than the Enron debacle.

But when Truncellito put his research findings into an appeal, his opposing lawyer turned him in to the State Bar disciplinary system for "harassment."

The disciplinary system operates in secret, and its grievance committee was led by a divorce lawyer who said Truncellito was "suffering from a disability" because he was on
a "holy quest" against no-fault divorce.

Truncellito asked that the panel members be disqualified due to their financial vested interest, but to no avail.

In spite of the disciplinary action, the appeal got to Houston's First Court of Appeals. There, however, Truncellito did not receive the courtesy of a fifteen minute hearing. All he saw was a cursory typewritten opinion that had no judge's signature and that completely ignored the interpretation of the no-fault divorce statute. So Truncellito asked to have that opinion reviewed by the entire court. But that, too, was denied.

Truncellito says he could not believe that all nine justices would ignore an issue with such enormous social importance. "There was not a word or signature from any of the nine justices on the court. There was only the clerk's signature on a standard form letter."

The Texas Supreme Court also refused to review the no-fault statute. Astonished by what appeared to be a pattern of cover-up, Truncellito filed a $7.5 Billion lawsuit against the State Bar and opened an Internet website, www.no-one-is-married.com, to publicize the lawsuit.

The next day, the State Bar's "District Disability Committee" subpoenaed Truncellito and confronted him with a copy of the $7.5 Billion lawsuit they had obtained from the Internet website. Truncellito's law license was then suspended, after a bar official reported: "Mental Status Examination revealed a smiling, pleasant, [50] year old man who looked about the stated age. He was trim and fit, talked about how he worked out 3 or 4 times a week, and wore a suit and tie... He interwove legal terminology with Biblical scripture. Clearly, he seemed to think that the Biblical intertwining with what was going on was self-explanatory, but made little sense... In my opinion he appeared Psychotic."

Twenty-four hours earlier, Truncellito had seen an independent psychiatrist who reported, "It was my professional opinion at the time of the evaluation that Mr. Truncellito did not have any diagnosable psychiatric condition."

Nonetheless, because his license was suspended, Truncellito was forced to dismiss the $7.5 Billion lawsuit or face prosecution as a felon - for Unauthorized Practice of Law.

Truncellito has learned the hard way that it is not always easy to take on the system and stop such serious wrongdoing. Even so, he has not "learned his lesson." Who knows who will be gunning for him next?

(full rights granted to reproduce this article)

Ed Truncellito, JD
pursuejustice@lycos.com
http://www.no-one-is-married.com