Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Hitch or ditch, she'll help with the forms

Lin A. Grant, a licensed notary, helps people start marriages and end them. And she comes to you.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published June 5, 2006

	[Times photo: William Dunkley]
	Lin A. Grant, 52, top, helps Celeste Cavvellier, 37, complete the paperwork for a divorce during a meeting inside McDonald's.

PINELLAS PARK - The rolling billboard is a green 2000 Honda Accord coupe with 92,000 miles, sitting in the McDonald's parking lot, plastered like a NASCAR racer.

"Get Married/Divorced ... Divorces $295," says a sign. A splattered bug mars the first "O" in MOBILE MARRIAGES & DIVORCES on the front license plate.

On the seat covers, crazy-eyed Wile E. Coyote, wearing a bib, wielding a fork, chases the Road Runner, whose tongue protrudes mockingly. Thankfully, they are on different seats, as if by restraining order.

Inside McDonald's, an entrepreneur running this peculiar business is helping another client get divorced. When it comes to the life span of a holy union, Lin A. Grant plays both delivery doctor and funeral director - and she comes to you.

Celeste Cavvellier found her through the Yellow Pages. She sits across from Grant in the last booth at McDonald's underneath a neon rest room sign.

Lawyers can cost thousands of dollars, but Grant boasts a value menu of alternatives. She can put together divorce papers for no more than $900 "no matter what their situation."

Cavvellier, 37, was married for four years and is now eager for a divorce.

"Why don't you initial the bottom of this?" says Grant, pen in hand, stamp nearby, briefcase opened. "And this is asking for his full legal name and your legal name."

Grant is sure and firm, the same manner she displays in her day job as a state probation officer. Her style is a bit Erin Brockovich in a revealing lacy blouse under a pastel green coat. Her red lipstick clings to the straw in the child-sized drink on the table.

Cavvellier finishes signing, initialling and filling out 18 multi-page forms. Anyone could file them themselves, but few know how to.

"I'm going to be in contact with you," says Grant, 52, of Tampa. "I'm not going to leave you hanging."

"Please don't," Cavvellier says.

n n n

Dedication, love, and joy can grow only when you nourish them together. Marriage can be a lifelong unfolding of loving kindness, backed by the will to make it last. - part of a nonreligious wedding ceremony Grant wrote.

n n n

Grant has been married four times. The first lasted 10 years. The second lasted two. The third was annulled. The fourth, in 2001, lasted a year.

"I have absolutely no regrets about any of them or the decisions I've made," Grant says one day at Iavorone's Steak House & Grill, a swanky place with dark wood and booths that she calls a "great singles places."

"It's all good in my book. It was learning experiences ... and I'm looking for No. 5."

"I totally believe in marriage," she says. "I think it's the most wonderful thing to have, that two people can share. I'm an idealist, so I never give up hope for it finally working for me.''

Wedding No. 4 was how she got into this business. She sought simple, and found "Charlie's Notary" in the phone book. He told her it would cost just $35 for him to officiate. But, he warned, he didn't dress up or drive, meaning the ceremony had to be near him.

Grant chose Sulphur Springs Park. She donned her gown in the park bathroom. The ceremony included Grant, her mother, the groom and Charlie.

When he told Grant he didn't dress up, she didn't know that meant "clothes you'd throw out," Grant says.

She gives him credit for being a pioneering presider for the poor. But she thought she could do better.

In 2002, she decided to start a business, and took a shotgun approach to entrepreneuralism. She got her process server license and launched an investigative agency. It failed. She started teaching voice lessons. Didn't last.

In Florida, notaries can officiate marriage ceremonies and solemnize marriage licenses, which cost between $93.50 and $61. Grant got her notary license.

Mobile Marriages was born.

Grant will marry people on bikes. She'll marry them while scuba diving or parasailing. She won't sky-dive. But she'll arrange the flowers, having owned a flower shop. And she'll sing, being a professional singer for Opera Tampa. She loves marrying people. But it's untying the sacred knot that really pays.

n n n

Oscar Binda fell in love with a woman named Flo. A courier, he met her at a bank about four years ago. Their relationship bloomed, and they heard wedding bells.

Problem was, Binda was already married.

He and his wife married in 1986 but separated in 1989. They had never felt the need to cut legal ties until Binda, 45, met Flo.

"I fell in love again," he says.

One day, he saw the lettering on Grant's car and took it as a sign.

"I felt like I got lucky or something like that," he says.

A 15-minute meeting with Grant at McDonald's led to his July divorce. It was so painless, he says, he had Grant remarry him Sept. 3.

It took place in Binda's three-bedroom Carrollwood house. He wore a shirt and tie, no jacket. Flo, 39, wore a black dress with flowers.

"The way she explained everything step by step," Binda says, "I thought this was the lady to take care of the whole banana."

n n n

Grant charges $20 to officiate weddings plus travel costs: $1 a mile. On average, her total fee is $100. She's conducted about 30 weddings.

She charges a minimum of $295 for divorces. Clients must also pay a $363 court fee. She has 10 different packages, depending on whether there are children, property or uncooperative or missing partners involved. She calls them "a la carte" options. She's arranged about 25 divorces.

She's thinking about focusing on the divorce side of the business or at least divorcing that part of the business from its better half. It's more lucrative, plus brides don't like seeing the ill-fated words on her Honda.

Grant says she is careful when arranging divorces. She isn't a lawyer, and by law, cannot give divorce advice. She can only act as a "secretarial service," putting paperwork together for clients, says Lori Holcombe, the Florida Bar's counsel on unlicensed practice of law.

Last year, the Bar opened 82 cases statewide investigating the unlicensed practice of law regarding people advising in divorce cases.

A probation officer for 12 years, Grant says she has much to lose if she makes a mistake. Included in her divorce forms is a two-page explainer saying what she can and can't do.

She has a specific label for her role: "Divorce Clerk." Clients say she's good at it.

"She was right on, dead on, confident at what she was doing," says Michael Barnes, 41. He met Grant at a Burger King, where he ordered a Whopper combo and a divorce, which cost half as much as each of his first two. "There was no head scratching or maybe."

"Basically," Grant says, "when a person calls me, all they need to do is meet with me twice, fill out the paperwork, pay the money and show up in court."

Barnes says his divorce took all of three minutes before a judge.

n n n

Once, when someone backed out of officiating a wedding at the last minute, Grant filled in within a half hour and still made good on a pledge to take her daughter to a concert. Another time, she was on a date when another couple called. Marry them tonight or their 60-day marriage license expired, they told her.

They couldn't settle on a place, so Grant's date gave up his back yard for the ceremony. He snapped pictures with the couple's disposable camera and scored major points.

But he soon moved away.

"If he would've stuck around..." she says.

While Grant's still looking for Mr. Right, she appears to have wed him to others. She hasn't helped divorce anyone she's married.

But she just got a call.

"She hasn't called me back," Grant says. "Hopefully they can work it out."

Justin George can be reached at (813) 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 5, 2006, 05:55:21]