January 11, 2001 – Providenciales, Turks & Caicos
Ben and I eloped to Turks and Caicos at the beginning of 2001, and were married by a local officiant in front of our resort’s wedding planner, a Moroccan waiter, a small crowd of bored sunbathers, and a dive boat that unloaded on the dock while we were vowing to stick together through thick and thin. I vividly remember when the reverend started the service by saying, “We are gathered here today to witness the union of Michael and Kimberly…” Me: “No, that’s not us.” He flipped over a little bookmark with the names on it and started again. “We are gathered here today to witness the union of Frank and Maria…” Me: “Nope.” He got it on the 3rd try.
Maybe I should have been concerned when our official marriage certificate did not arrive in the mail as promised, 6-8 weeks after the wedding, but time passed and I sort of forgot about it. Nobody ever asked for it…I didn’t change my name, and the IRS didn’t require any proof for us to file our taxes jointly, so eventually it fell off my list.
During my exhaustive research about how to prepare for a temporary resident visa application, I saw mention of needing a marriage certificate and I did my best to get it. I emailed and called over and over, to probably a dozen different people. I tried the registrar of course, but I also contacted random officiants, wedding planners, lawyers, the tourism board…anyone I could think of. None of them would really give me the time of day. Eventually it was time for our visa interview and I still didn’t have the marriage certificate, so Ben and I applied for our visas separately and the marriage certificate fell off the list again.
About a month later I got a letter from my company saying that they were doing a health care dependent audit, which means that every employee using the corporate health insurance has to prove that each person receiving health care benefits is a legal dependent. With the kids it was easy – just upload a copy of their birth certificate. But for Ben I had to upload our tax return AND MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE. The universe was obviously telling me to get my act together and have that document on hand…what if something happened to one of us and the other had to prove that we were the heir to the estate?
I started my calls and emails with renewed vigor – my contacts were all still on Island Time. Then I spoke to a really helpful notary/apostille guy in Quincy Mass (Jim Murphy), and he said, “Maybe you guys are not actually married.” Oh dear. I called our town clerk to find out whether we could get married again…we were getting down to the wire because we only had a couple weeks before I was due to leave and the deadline for the health care audit was a week after that. After checking with the state, the town clerk told me that I would have to provide a “negative statement” – a government document certifying that we were not married between 2001 and 2015. Considering how difficult it has been to prove we ARE married, it seemed almost impossible to prove that we are not. The volunteers for the position of ring bearer and flower girl were disappointed, but getting married again was not feasible within our time frame.
Finally, I called a lawyer in Turks and Caicos, and for $540 (!) she said she could get the certificate. At this point, the options were to pay the ransom or have Ben get kicked off of my health insurance, so I agreed to pay on delivery. Over a 2-week period she applied for the certificate but the person who searches the archives was away. Then she said it had been located but the person who certifies the documents was out sick. Then the lawyer left on vacation. Yesterday I received a scanned copy by email, and I can’t even think of words to express the feeling of relief after such a frustrating process. It was a nail-biter, especially because I didn’t want my company to think I was a deadbeat who had a non-qualified dependent on my insurance.
Photo by Marc Jobin, official will-signing witness and photographer.
In other news of legal documentation, we signed our wills this week. We’re not planning to die in Mexico, but it felt like an important loose end to tie up. We met with a lawyer, Carolyn Spring, over a year ago, but there were a couple of issues we couldn’t agree on. Luckily Carolyn didn’t give up on us and had her notes from our meeting. We still don’t agree on the issues, but we came to an acceptable compromise. The first was that I want to be cremated and it’s against Ben’s religion, so my will states that if he dies first I will be cremated and if I die first he can decide. I don’t care that much, because I’ll be gone. I just don’t really want my body taking up space on Earth. The second issue was who to leave our estate to if our entire immediate family dies at the same time. We finally narrowed it down to a short list of 15 family members who will divide our assets and will each end up with enough money to take a vacation or buy new living room furniture. If you’re local and you need help with your estate planning, Carolyn was great to work with and reasonably-priced.
3 more wake-ups in the ‘Ham and one in Nashville!