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I take thee ... unless it messes up my alimony

If she got remarried, he doesn't have to pay anymore. But a judge says, technically, she never really did.

By BRADY DENNIS
Published January 27, 2005

The program for an event held by Beth Rice in Las Vegas described it as "The Vegas wedding weekend," but it was apparently not recorded as a legal marriage.

TAMPA - Last summer, Beth Rice and Stanley Blacker invited more than 50 friends and family to Las Vegas.

She printed programs and T-shirts that read: "Vegas Wedding Weekend, June 10-13, 2004."

A video of the event shows a woman singing: Going to the chapel and we're gonna get married ...

Later, Rice walks down the aisle past her guests, carrying a bouquet.

She and Blacker stand under a chuppah, a canopy traditionally used in Jewish weddings. They exchange rings. Blacker stomps on a glass, another Jewish wedding tradition.

A rabbi talks about "formally consecrating" their love and asking them to repeat vows that begin, "I betroth you to me always ..."

They went to Europe, then settled into Blacker's $500,000 Westchase home, paying bills from a joint bank account. Her kids called him their stepfather.

So, are Beth Rice and Stanley Blacker married?

Michael Rice, Beth's ex-husband, certainly thinks so.

The couple divorced in late 2001 after more than 12 years of marriage, two children and many months of contentious, hard-fought negotiations. In their final agreement, he consented to pay $5,000 per month in alimony for five years, guaranteed, unless one of them died or remarried.

Simply put, Michael Rice says his wife is remarried. She says she isn't because, she never got a marriage license.

Surrounded by their attorneys, the former couple spent more than eight hours in court Wednesday arguing exactly what constitutes a marriage (their definitions varied wildly, by the way).

They called witnesses. They introduced evidence. They cited case law. They showed the Vegas video. Michael Rice huffed. Beth Rice cried.

In the end, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Robert Foster was left to define what marriage meant in this case, and decide exactly who would get $30,000 in alimony payments in limbo since July.

Even the gray-bearded judge seemed befuddled at the outset.

"(This is) a very unusual set of circumstances," he said. "It's a very unique case."

Beth Rice said Wednesday she had intended to get married in every sense of the word during their June trip to Las Vegas.

In May, knowing her upcoming marriage could terminate the alimony payments, she filed a petition to increase his monthly child support payments. He filed a counter-petition to reduce them. Uncertain how that might affect her finances, and still working on the details of a prenuptial agreement with Blacker, Beth Rice decided not to legally file for marriage, she testified Wednesday.

At the same time, she didn't want to cancel the Las Vegas event. "A lot of time and money had been spent," she said.

So they decided not to get a marriage license. They told their guests that, despite what the program said, the event no longer was a wedding. It was a commitment ceremony. And those rings they exchanged? Those were commitment rings. That trip to Europe? It wasn't a honeymoon; it was a commitment-moon, they joked.

Back in Tampa, they decided not to put the other's names together on any real property. She kept her last name. They told the children they weren't formally married.

"I told them there were legal issues that we needed to work out," Beth Rice said.

Pressed again and again by her ex-husband's attorney, she insisted that she and Blacker were not holding themselves up as a married couple.

"He's not my husband," she said. "We are living together. We are co-habitating. We saw no reason we could not cohabitate."

Back and forth it went. Michael and Beth Rice never spoke a word directly to each other. The lawyers spoke plenty.

"This is a deception. What you have before you is deception," Michael Rice's attorney, Nancy Harris, told the judge. "It is a dangerous loophole that could be created by Ms. Rice."

Hold on. The meaning of marriage, at least under the divorce agreement, is cut and dried, argued Ted Millison, Beth Rice's attorney.

"It can mean nothing other than legal marriage," he said. "It requires a marriage license. Anything else is irrelevant."

Millison said that Michael Rice "should have known what he was getting into" when he signed a nonmodifiable alimony agreement. He also pointed out that Michael Rice had originally sought to include a co-habitation clause in the agreement but later dropped that request.

"The parties are bound by the contract," Millison argued. "The job of this court is to interpret the law, not make the law."

The trial had started at 9 a.m. By 5:06 p.m., the bailiff was looking drowsy; the court reporter, antsy.

Foster complimented the lawyers on their arguments, said he had read the case law and, with tinge of ambivalence, was ready to make a ruling.

He got a running start, leaving those in the room wondering just where he stood. "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is most certainly a duck," he said. He told Beth Rice that she, Blacker and her children "are a family now ... and I think that's important to recognize."

But, he said, "This was a ceremony. This was not a wedding."

He pointed out that Rice and Blacker cannot legally file a joint tax return, receive the other's Social Security benefits or enjoy other common aspects of marriage.

"I think a de facto marriage has occurred," Foster said, but that isn't sufficient under the law "to terminate the alimony."

He said that's an issue for the state Legislature, or perhaps the 2nd District Court of Appeal. But not for Courtroom 410, not on this day. Michael Rice would have to keep sending his monthly $5,000 checks.

Afterward, in the emptying courthouse, Beth Rice declined to comment. But Millison, her attorney, said, "I'm obviously pleased. The judge did what was right."

Down the hallway, Harris vowed to appeal the ruling. "This is not a fair result," she said.

Michael Rice's mother called the whole thing "a sham."

And Michael?

He just shook his head, thinking of writing those $5,000 checks. "It's going to disgust me every month," he said.

[Last modified January 27, 2005, 05:40:26]