FRAUD? OR NO FRAUD? Despite all his hideous observations, the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, in a moment of lucidity, said, ?In revenge and love, woman is more barbarous than man.? He didn?t know the half of it. No woman ever forgets where she buried the hatchet. Jerry and Amy Nix, spawned a daughter, Jacy Marie, in 1991. But as so often happens, four years later they divorced and Jacy went to live with her mother. Amy, though, developed some mental problems and Jerry took her to court to get Jacy back. Jerry prevailed and he was named Jacy?s primary residential parent. Amy was given the same visitation that Jerry had enjoyed after their divorce. Little did Jerry realize the extent of Amy?s capacity for revenge. One Friday, when Jacy was 14 years old, he took Jacy for her regular visitation with Amy, thinking that Amy was taking Jacy for a vacation in Florida. Instead, Amy took Jacy to Juvenile Court in McNairy County, Tennessee, for Jacy to marry her eighteen-year-old boyfriend, Kevin. That?s right. Jacy was only 14. She has to be 18 to wed Kevin. After arriving in McNairy County, Amy filled out a preprinted affidavit acknowledging that she is Jacy's mother, that Jacy is 14 and that Amy approved of marriage between Jacy and Kevin. A youth services officer for the McNairy County Juvenile Court met briefly with Jacy and Kevin to satisfy himself that everything was on the up-and-up. He then showed all the paperwork to the juvenile court judge who signed the order without ever setting his eyes upon Amy, Jacy, or Kevin. Then it was on to apply for the marriage license. A clerk asked them for a copy of Jacy's birth certificate or some other record identifying her legal parents and her date of birth. Oops. Amy had nothing like that. Instead, she showed the clerk the front page of a proposed Mississippi court order that her attorney had drafted in the course of her divorce which indicated that she had primary custody of Jacy. No second page. No judge?s signature. Just the first page. The clerk office accepted the bogus, unsigned order instead of the preferred forms of identification and issued the marriage license. Amy later explained that she presented the first page of this order because it was all she had with her to show the identity of Jacy's parents. A few days after Jacy and Kevin were married, Amy called Jerry and told him that Jacy and Kevin had married. If there was ever any doubt about why Amy engineered this adventure, all doubts were erased when she told Jerry that, as a result of the marriage, Jacy was emancipated and that he no longer had custody of her. In other words, ? If I can?t have her, ain?t nobody gonna have her.? Except, perhaps, Kevin. Jerry immediately filed a motion in the McNairy County Juvenile Court asking that the Juvenile Court order authorizing the marriage license to Jacy be set aside. Jerry said that Amy had committed a fraud on the court. Amy filed a response denying any fraud. Amy?s side of the story goes something like this: In the summer of 2006, Jacy told Amy she thought she was pregnant and asked her if she could marry Kevin. Jacy took a pregnancy test with inconclusive results. Amy didn?t take Jacy to see a physician for a pregnancy test and as it turned out, Jacy was not pregnant. Nevertheless, Amy explained that she consented to Jacy's marriage to Kevin because she felt that marriage was in Jacy's best interest in light of the possibility that she was pregnant. Well, what do you think? Did the judge revoke the marriage? Or did he determine that Amy had legitimate concerns for the welfare of her daughter and let the marriage stand? To find out whether the judge allowed Jacy to remain married or whether he nullified the marriage, e-mail us at lefflerlawoffice@comcast.net for the answer.
