Strange things can happen if you “remarry” before you are officially divorced. Take the recent Fourth District case of Greely v. Greely and Lu, (Cal. Ct. App. – May 20, 2026), in which one Albert Greely “remarried” well before he was actually divorced. Since there is no legal status associated with being “divorced-ish,” a court battle ensued over whether Albert’s first wife could levy on his would-be second wife’s bank and retirement accounts to satisfy his debt.
Payment, Support, and a Writ of Execution
Albert failed to pay the $1.4M equalization payment and spousal support arrears he owed his first wife, Patricia, pursuant to their Judgment for Dissolution, finalized on May 18, 2023, when the Court terminated the Greelys’ marital status. Albert was restored to single status from Patricia nearly three years after his July 2020 wedding to Jenny, who believed he was already divorced from Patricia but later would discover otherwise.
To collect on the amounts owed by Albert pursuant to the Judgment, Patricia obtained a writ of execution and levied on Albert’s bank accounts pursuant to California Code of Civil Procedure §700.140 of the Enforcement of Judgments Law (EJL) (§680.010 et seq.). The rule is that deposit accounts in the name of a third party other than the judgment debtor are not subject to levy unless legal process served on the third party includes a court order authorizing the levy. The key exception to this is if the creditor delivers an affidavit to the financial institution showing that at the time of the levy, the third party is the judgment debtor’s spouse. And that is exactly what Patricia did. As a result, two of Jenny’s accounts with funds totaling $383,549 were frozen, kicking off a two-and-a-half-year court battle over the funds.
Annulment and Beyond
Jenny and Albert quickly annulled their bigamous marriage and challenged Patricia’s levies on Jenny’s savings and retirement accounts. The trial court ruled that Jenny and Albert’s annulment did not affect the basis for the levies or invalidate them. The appellate court disagreed, holding that the notices of levy were defective because Jenny’s marriage to Albert was void from the start. It ordered Patricia to return the funds obtained through the invalid levies. If Patricia still wished to levy Jenny’s accounts, she first had to obtain a court order authorizing the funds on deposit to be used to satisfy Albert’s divorce-related debts. The appellate court disagreed with Patricia’s claims that the marriage between Albert and Jenny remained valid with respect to third parties, that Jenny’s motion to quash was improper, or that Jenny was a putative spouse.
Of course, if Albert wanted to marry Jenny during the pendency of his divorce case with Patricia, all he had to do was file a request for order in the family court to terminate his marital status with Patricia before marrying her. That said, after all the twists and turns of this case, Jenny is probably glad he didn’t. Yet, one cannot help but wonder how the conversation went with Jenny when Albert told her that he was still married to Patricia when he married her.