In re the Marriage of: Tamara Ann Fonoti, petitioner, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A17-0091

In re the Marriage of:
Tamara Ann Fonoti, petitioner,
Respondent,

vs.

Mace Faamasani Fonoti,
Appellant.

Filed May 14, 2018
Affirmed
Klaphake, Judge*
Dissenting, Ross, Judge

St. Louis County District Court
File Nos. 69DU-FA-14-1072, 69DU-FA-15-1290

Jeremy M. Hurd, Orman Nord & Hurd, P.L.L.P., Duluth, Minnesota (for respondent)

Peter L. Radosevich, Radosevich Law Office, Esko, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Reilly, Judge; and Klaphake,
Judge.

* Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.

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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
KLAPHAKE, Judge
Appellant Mace Faamasani Fonoti challenges the district court’s determinations that
respondent Tamara Ann Fonoti was his putative spouse from 1989 until 2013, and that she
was entitled to receive spousal maintenance and a property allocation as if the parties had
been legally married during that period. Respondent cross-appealed, arguing, among other
things, that the district court erred in failing to award her an equalization payment in the
property distribution. We affirm b ecause appellant did not challenge the district court’s
findings as to respondent’s status as a putative spouse, the district court’s findings support
its conclusions as to that status, and the district court’s property distribution was not an
abuse of its discretion.
D E C I S I O N
Under Minnesota law, “[a] civil marriage entered into before the dissolution of an
earlier civil marriage of one of the parties” is “prohibited.” Minn. Stat. § 517.03 ,
subd. 1(1) (2016). But when a person in a cohabiting relationship mistakenly, but in good
faith, believes that he or she is married, the putative-spouse statute may apply. Minn. Stat.
§ 518.055 (2016). That statute provides:
Any person who has cohabited with another to whom
the person is not legally married in the good faith belief that
the person was married to the other is a p utative spouse until
knowledge of the fact that the person is not legally married
terminates the status and prevents acquisition of further rights.
A putative spouse acquires the rights conferred upon a legal
spouse, including the right to maintenance fol lowing
termination of the status, whether or not the marriage is
prohibited or declared a nullity. If there is a legal spouse or

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other putative spouses, rights acquired by a putative spouse do
not supersede the rights of the legal spouse or those acquired
by other putative spouses, but the court shall apportion
property, maintenance, and support rights among the claimants
as appropriate in the circumstances and in the interests of
justice.

Id. Whether a person is a putative spouse in “‘good faith’ is judged subjectively.” Xiong
v. Xiong , 800 N.W.2d 187, 191 (Minn. App. 2011) (quotation omitted) , review denied
(Minn. Aug. 16, 2011). An appellate court will not disturb a district court’s determination
that a party is a putative spouse “unless, upon review of the record, it is left with a definite
and firm conviction that a mistake has been made.” Id. (quotation omitted).
Appellant argues that the district court erred by failing to properly weigh evidence
suggesting that respondent knew that the parties were not legally married after they
received a phone call in 1991 from appellant’s “former” wife, Beulah Fonoti, in which
Beulah asserted that appellant’s prior marriage to her was not dissolved. But respondent
testified that she retained her good-faith belief in the legality of her marriage even after this
phone call, telling appellant to “take care of it ,” which, in her view, meant that he should
resolve any potential impediments to the otherwise legal status of thei r marriage. The
district court found that respondent
maintained that at that point she still believed herself to be
legally married to [appellant] even though his previous
marriage to Beulah had reportedly not been dissolved as the
parties continued to hold themselves out as husband and wife,
[appellant] did not indicate to her that they were not legally
married, they had a marriage license signifying they were
husband and wife, and they executed legal documents referring
to themselves as husband and wife.

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For several reasons, we decline to overturn the district court’s determinations that
respondent was a putative spouse. First, the district court’s findings, which are based
largely on credibility determinations, should not be assailed on appellate review. Appellate
courts “defer to the district court’s opportunity to assess the credibility of witness [es].”
In re Pamela Stisser Grantor Trust, 818 N.W.2d 495, 507 (Minn. 2012). Here, the district
court made numerous credibility findings in support of its decision. As to respondent, the
district court found that she “clearly articulated her understanding of the nature of the
parties’ relationship since its inception and the significance of the marriage license and
ceremony to the parties’ relationship,” and her testimony was consistent and corroborated
even by appellant, who testified that he also believed that the parties were legally married
until 2012 or 2013. The district court noted the conflicting evidence on whether respondent
knew that appellant ’s “ marriage to Beu lah had not been dissolved,” but relied on the
“frankness and sincerity of [respondent’s] testimony” and its “reasonableness . . . in light
of all the other evidence in this case.” On this record, we cannot reach a conclusion other
than that the district court found respondent credible. As to appellant, the district court
also made credibility findings generally rejecting his testimony, and specifically found not
credible appellant’s testimony that he believed respondent knew that they were not legally
married, noting that appellant himself testified that he “‘had no clue’ whether he was
divorced from . . . Beulah and that he had never taken any steps on his own to dissolve their
marriage nor did he receive any documentation that the marriage had been dissolved.”
Finally, the district court rejected the testimony of the parties’ children and one other

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witness, whose testimony the district court found either “not conclusive” or based on an
“estranged relationship.”
On the deference to be accorded the district court’s credibility determinations, the
case of Xiong is instructive. There, this court affirmed a determination that a Hmong
woman, who participated in a Hmong cultural marriage ceremony and later signed a
marriage license that was never registered, was a putative spouse. Xiong, 800 N.W.2d at
188-92. As in this case, the putative spouse held herself out in the community as a spouse
and signed numerous legal documents as a spouse. Id. at 189. The district court determined
that the woman was a putative spouse until she learned the true status of her relations hip
upon petitioning for divorce. Id. at 189 -91. The district court relied on “ample record
evidence” to support the existence of a putative marriage, and this court affirmed, deferring
to the district court’s credibility determinations. Id. at 191-92.
Second, we observe no error in the district court’s interpretation of either the “good
faith” or “knowledge” provisions of Minn. Stat. § 518.055, both of which the district court
addressed in reaching its decision. This court has interpreted the statute to require “only a
‘good faith belief,’ not a ‘reasonable belief.’” Id. at 192. As noted, the district court
concluded that respondent retained a subjective good-faith belief in the legality of her
marriage; record evidence supports that finding. The district court also considered and
rejected the notion that the assertion by Beulah extinguished respondent’s good-faith belief
by providing respondent with knowledge that she was not legally married to appellant. The
statute does not define the term “knowledge.” But its ordinary definition accords “[a]n
awareness or understanding of a fact or circumstance; a state of mind in which a person

6
has no substantial doubt about the existence of a fact.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1003-04
(10th ed. 2 014) (defining knowledge). In the statu te, juxtaposition of “good faith” to
“knowledge” suggests that “knowledge” requires an actual awareness of the true status of
the illegality of the putative marriage. See State v. Prigge, 907 N.W.2d 635, 638 (Minn.
2018) (stating that courts “construe a statute as a whole and interpret its language to give
effect to all of its provisions” and that the canon against surplusage “favors giving each
word or phrase in a statute a distinct, not a n identical, meaning”) (quotations omitted);
cf. All Parks All . for Change v. Uniprop Manufactured Hous. Cmt ys. Income Fund , 732
N.W.2d 189, 193 (Minn. 2007) (noting that analysis of the plain language of a statute
requires interpretation “in light of . . . surrounding sections”). A gain, the district court’s
findings and the underlying record support the district court’s decision. Respondent, who
has a high school education and has worked as a housecleaner throughout her career (with
a net monthly income of $416), apparently chose to reject the assertion of Beulah, who
may have had emotional or financial reasons for claiming that her marriage to appellant
had not been dissolved . We decline to impute actual knowledge of the prohibited nature
of her own marriage to respondent when the only support for that conclusion was offered
via an isolated phone call from a former spouse. After receiving the information, appellant
and respondent continued to act in reliance on the legality of their own marriage for over
20 years. While we acknowledge that the district court could have made findings to support
an opposite conclusion , o n this record, we cannot say that the district court erred in
determining that respondent did not have actual knowledge of the true s tatus of her
marriage. See Vangsness v. Vangsness , 607 N.W.2d 468, 474 (Minn. App. 2000) (“That

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the record might support findings other than those made by the [ district] court does not
show that the court’s findings are defective .”); Minn. R. Civ. P. 52.0 1 (stating that an
appellate court will not set aside a trial court’s factual findings unless they are clearly
erroneous); see also Parts & Elec. Motors, Inc. v. Sterling Elec., Inc. , 866 F.2d 228, 233
(7th Cir. 1988) (“To be clearly erroneous, a decision must strike us as more than just maybe
or probably wrong; it must strike us as wrong with the force of a five -week-old,
unrefrigerated dead fish.”). When questioned at the hearing about what she would have
done if she had been told that her marriage was prohibited as a matter of law due to the
existence of a prior marriage, respondent acknowledged that she might have done things
differently, but she “had a marriage certificate that said [she] was married” and “believed
that [she] was still legally married. ” She further s tated, “I am not a lawyer. I’m not a
paralegal.”
In reaching this decision, we decline to rely on the general presumption that a party
is presumed to know the law. The specific knowledge requirement of the statute controls,
rather than the general presumption. To rule otherwise would contradict the statutory
language establishing that a party can be a putative spouse unless the party has
“knowledge” of the illegality of the marriage. See Elect. Short Line Terminal Co. v. City
of Minneapolis, 242 Minn. 1, 7, 64 N.W.2d 149, 153 (1954) (approving the statement “that
it is fallacious to hold that the presumption that everybody knows the law supplies adequate
constructive notice” in some circumstances); Peterson v. First Nat’l Bank of Ceylon, 162
Minn. 369, 375, 203 N.W. 53, 55 (1925) ( referring to the presumption “that all know the
law” as “almost humorous and wholly suppositious” in some contexts, and stating that the

8
rule should not “j ustify or even suggest that a lo ss should be imposed on one and an
unconscionable gain permitted another merely because of the former’s ignorance of law”);
WGSH, Inc. v. Bollinger , 384 N.W.2d 592, 594 (Minn. App. 1986) (“Under some
circumstances, ignorance of the law can be a reasonable excuse.”). The question to be
answered here is a question of fact —whether respondent had actual knowledge of her
marital status—and her testimony, which the fact -finder believed, shows that she did not .
Further, to the extent that the presumption applied, it was rebutted in this case. See Minn.
R. Evid. 301 cmt (“If sufficient evidence is introduced that would justify a finding of fact
contrary to the assumed fact the presumption is rebutted and has no further function at the
trial.”).
We are satisfied that, applying the statutory language as interpreted in Xiong, the
district court’s findings support its decision that respondent was a putative spouse for over
20 years because respondent had a good -faith b elief that she was legally married to
appellant. During that time, the parties obtained a marriage license , were married by a
district court judge of this state, and, in accordance with their trial testimony and
documentary evidence, held themselves out a s husband and wife in every way. They
purchased property as husband and wife, filed annual taxes as husband and wife, and
executed reciprocal wills as husband and wife. They established themselves in the
community as husband and wife, including living in a family household with two children
born of their union.

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Appellant next argues that the district court erred and abused its discretion by
awarding permanent spousal maintenance to wife. 1 We disagree. The putative -spouse
statute permits the putative spouse to “acquire[] the rights conferred upon a legal spouse,
including the right to maintenance following termination of the status.” Minn. Stat.
§ 518.055. The only factual basis for appellant’s claim that the $1,000 per month
maintenance ordered was excessive is that the putative marriage lasted for only two years.
Because we uphold the district court’s decision on the term of the putative marriage, we
also uphold the district court’s determination on the amount of maintenance awarded. See
Duffey v. Duffey, 416 N.W.2d 830, 833 (Minn. App. 1987) (“The [district court] has wide
discretion in determining the amount and duration of spousal maintenance and its
determination will not be reversed absent an abuse of that discretion.”) , review deni ed
(Minn. Feb. 24, 1988).
Appellant further argues that the district court erroneously set a valuation date for
the division of property, including his retirement and stock accounts. The district court set
the valuation date at June 30, 2014. Appellant argues that respondent “did not acquire any
rights to his retirement and stock accounts that accumulated after the two year period” from

1 Respondent argues that this court lacks jurisdiction to review issues of spousal
maintenance and the valuation date of property acquired dur ing the putative marriage
because those issues were determined in the original judgment of October 28, 2016, and
not altered by the amended judgment filed on November 21, 2016, from which appellant
appealed. We reject this argument because respondent made a timely motion for amended
findings, and under Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 104.01, subd. 2, “the time for appeal of the order
or judgment that is the subject of such motion runs for all parties from the service by any
party of notice of filing of the order dis posing of the last such motion outstanding .” On
appeal, this “court may reverse, affirm or modify the judgment or order appealed from or
take any other action as the interest of justice may require.” Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 103.04.

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1989 to 1991, when appellant argues that respondent “knew” of the marriage between
Beulah and appellant. Again, this issue is resolved by our affirmance of the district court’s
determination on the duration of the putative marriage. See Minn. Stat. § 518.58, subd. 1
(2016) (requiring the district court, upon dissolution of a marriage or an annulment, to
“make a just and equitable division of the marital property,” taking into account such
factors as “the length of the marriage”). Because we affirm the valuation date of the
division of property, we also conclude that the division of marital property was a proper
exercise of the district court’s discretion. See Maurer v. Maurer , 623 N.W.2d 604, 606
(Minn. 2001) (“A [district] court has broad discretion in dividing property upon dissolution
of a marriage.”).
In her cross-appeal, respondent argues that the district court erred by failing to award
her an equalization payment of $20,850.73 in the property division. She argues that the
district court’s award of net marital property, less debt, reveals a 55% -45% split favoring
appellant, which is inequitable. “We will affirm a district court’s division of property if it
has an acceptable basis in fact and principle even though this court may have taken a
different approach.” Prahl v. Prahl, 627 N.W.2d 698, 704 (Minn. App. 2001) ( quotation
omitted). “[D]ebts are apportioned as part of the property settlement and are treated in the
same manner as the division of assets.” Lynch v. Lynch, 411 N.W.2d 263, 266 (Minn. App.
1987), review denied (Minn. Oct. 30, 1987). Respondent’s argument in seeking an
equalization payment is based o n the mathematical difference in the parties’ net property
awards. “A [district] court’s division of marital property need not be mathematically
equal.” Johns v. Johns, 354 N.W.2d 564, 566 (Minn. App. 1984). The property -division

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statute requires the pr operty division to be “just and equitable,” considering “relevant
factors” such as “the length of the marriage, any prior marriage of a party, the age, health,
station, occupation, amount and sources of income, vocational skills, employability, estate,
liabilities, needs, opportunity for future acquisition of capital assets, and income of each
party.” Minn. Stat. § 518.58, subd. 1. The district court’s findings on the division of
property were based on significant documentary evidence and the parties’ tes timony, and
are consistent with the evidence produced. In light of the whole record, we observe no
abuse of discretion in the district court’s failure to award respondent an equalization
payment.
Affirmed.

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ROSS, Judge (dissenting)
Today’s majority opinion distinguishes Minnesota as the first state in the union, and
I expect last state, to dispose of the presumption that everyone knows she cannot marry an
already-married man. This should be a rhetorical question: When a woman learns that the
man she married two years earlier was then, and is still, legally married to a different
woman, hasn’t she also learned that her own marriage is not valid? The majority does not
treat this question as rhetorical. And to my dismay, it answers, No. I respectfully dissent.
The putative-spouse analysis pivots on the simple word, “until.” The statute read s,
“Any person who has cohabited with another to whom the person is not legally married in
the good faith belief that the person was married to the other is a putative spouse until
knowledge of the fact that the person is not legally married terminates the status and
prevents acquisition of further rights.” Minn. Stat. § 518.055 (2016). The word “until”
directs how a putative-spouse analysis goes. Courts ask first whether the alleged putative
spouse originally had a good -faith belief that she was legally ma rried. If yes, courts ask
second whether she ever learned that her marriage was not legal. That is, a person who is
not legally married but who, in good faith, believes she is legally married, gets putative -
spouse privileges only until she learns that her marriage was not legal.
For the sake of this dissent, I will assume that Tamara Fonoti was Mace Fonoti’s
putative spouse initially despite Mace’s ongoing marriage to Beulah Fonoti. But to be clear,
the record raises serious doubt that Tamara could have ever been Mace’s putative spouse.
Their romance began when both were married to others, and Mace never told Tamara he
divorced his wife. Asked about Mace’s marital status up to the time of the 1989 marriage,

D-2

Tamara replied, “He told me that Beulah was going to take care of it.” By “it,” she was
referring to a divorce. So when Tamara married Mace, she merely hoped that Mace was,
at some point in the future, “going to” dissolve his extant marriage. And over the years she
knew he never divorced, asking him several times to “take care of it” and knowing that he
never did. This presents a separate ground for dissent that needs no further development.
As for the main reason for my dissent, I can assume that Tamara was Mace’s
putative spouse for two years despite Mace’s marriage to Beulah. Even if Tamara somehow
fit the definition of “putative spouse” for the first two years of the supposed marriage based
on a good -faith belief that Mace had actually “take[n] care of” his divorce with Beulah
Fonoti before the ceremon y, the undisputed evidence presents an “until” moment that
ended this putative-spouse status. That moment came in 1991, two years into the presumed
marriage. Tamara did not testify merely that Beulah called and claimed to still be married
to Mace, as the majority suggests; under questioning by her own attorney Tamara testified
that she “learned” that Mace’s “prior marriage had not been dissolved” and she said she
learned this “a couple of years after” her 1989 marriage ceremony. The majority also does
not m ention Tamara’s next and even more dispositive admission, but the admission
activates the statute’s “until” phrase. Tamara’s testimony on cross-examination establishes
absolutely and unequivocally that she also knew that, because of Mace’s failure to divorce
Beulah, Mace was still married to Beulah at the time he participated in the marriage
ceremony with Tamara:
Q: So, Ms. Fonoti, just to be clear, you discovered that Mr. Fonoti was still
married to [Beulah Fonoti] two years into your marriage, correct?
A: Correct.

D-3

Back to my rhetorical question: Once Tamara learned that the man she supposedly
married two years earlier had been at the time, and was still, already legally married to
another, didn’t she simultaneously learn that her putative marriage was not valid? Yes,
under Minnesota law. First, Mace’s marriage to Tamara was prohibited by law. In
Minnesota, “a civil marriage entered into before the dissolution of an earlier civil marriage
of one of the parties” is “prohibited.” Minn. Stat. § 517.03 , subd. 1(1) (2016). Second,
despite the district court’s implicit finding that Tamara did not “subjectively” know that
she could not become legally married to an already -married man, she had constructive
knowledge of this fact by operation of law. This is because “everyone is presumed to know
the law.” Brekke v. THM Biomedical, Inc ., 683 N.W.2d 771, 778 (Minn. 2004). So at the
moment two years into Tamara’s purported marriage to Mace when Tamara actually knew
that Mace was still married to Beulah, she also constructively knew that her “marriage
entered into before the dissolution of” Mace’s earlier marriage was prohibited by law, and
so she necessarily knew that she was not legally married to Mace. Under this
straightforward application of Minnesota law, the mome nt Tamara possessed this
knowledge was the moment she ceased to be Mace’s putative spouse. And because she is
neither Mace’s legal spouse nor his putative spouse, the district court has no statutory
grounds to order Mace to pay her spousal maintenance.
The majority reaches a different conclusion by two legal errors. First, it refuses to
apply the presumption that everyone knows the law. Second, it relies wrongly on the fact
that Mace and Tamara held themselves out as a married couple for years.

D-4

The majori ty fails to apply the legal presumption that everyone knows that she
cannot marry a married man. It does so under the notion that we consider subjective rather
than objective knowledge under the putative -spouse statute. The majority’s approach
implies that presumed knowledge is objective knowledge. It is not. The difference between
subjective knowledge and objective knowledge is the difference between being held
responsible for what you actually know and being held responsible for what a hypothetical,
reasonable person should have known. See Choa Yang Xiong v. Su Xiong , 800 N.W.2d
187, 191-92 (Minn. App. 2011) (citing Bahr v. Capella Univ., 788 N.W.2d 76, 82 (Minn.
2010)), review denied (Aug. 16, 2011). That everyone is presumed to know the law requires
courts to impute knowledge of the law to each person, just as if she actually knows the law
subjectively. Presuming knowledge is not holding a person responsible for what she should
know; it is relieving others of having to prove some element of what she actua lly knows.
This has been so for a very, very long time. See B.F. Jenness v. Sch. Dist. No. 31,
Washington Cty, 12 Minn. 448, 449, 12 Gil. 337, 345 (1867) (“Every person is presumed
to know the law, and is bound at his peril to take notice of the public sta tutes; it must be
supposed, therefore, the plaintiff knew . . . .”). The majority affirms only by relying on
inapposite cases and flatly refusing to apply this cornerstone of Minnesota jurisprudence.
The sole Minnesota subjective -knowledge case relied on by the majority is also
inapposite. It does not involve the situation here, where the alleged putative spouse learned
that a prior marriage existed through the time of the later marriage ceremony. Instead, in
Xiong, a 16 -year-old Laotian refugee who had di fficulty understanding English
participated in a Hmong cultural marriage ceremony and, years later, obtained a marriage

D-5

license but never registered it to obtain a marriage certificate. Xiong, 800 N.W.2d at 188-
89. When the couple received their license, t hey stood before a governmental official,
raised their hands to swear an oath, and were handed an official document that the young
woman’s husband told her had officially consummated the marriage. Id. That case did not
involve two people who held a marriag e ceremony and then came to know, as Tamara
admitted she came to know, that one of them was not divorced and remained married to
another person.
Although this situation was not addressed in Xiong or any other Minnesota case, it
has been addressed in two of the three states that, like Minnesota, have adopted section 209
of the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act as their putative -spouse statute. See
Christopher L. Blakesley, The Putative Marriage Doctrine , 60 Tul. L. Rev. 1, 16 –17
(1985). Of the three other states that have adopted the act, one (Montana) has not apparently
had occasion to apply the presumption that everyone knows the law to this situation. But
both of the others (Illinois and Colorado) have applied the presumption by imputing
knowledge of the law—specifically, knowledge that one cannot be legally married if either
partner was married to another at the time of the ceremony —to a person claiming to have
a good-faith belief in the legality of a later marriage.
Both of those courts impute knowledge of the law in the exact way the presumption
should apply here. The Colorado Court of Appeals, for example, rejected a defendant’s
claim of putative-spouse status this way: “It is undisputed that throughout the period of his
cohabitation” with a woman with whom the defendant had participated in a marriage
ceremony without having been divorced from his wife, the “defendant knew that he was in

D-6

fact married to another person. This undisputed fact negates any good faith belief” that the
later marriage was legal. People v. McGuire , 751 P.2d 1011, 1012 (Colo. App. 1987)
(emphasis added). And in a case involving a woman who, like Tamara Fonoti, continued
in a supposed marriage for more than 25 years, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the
woman’s putative-spouse claim this way: “[P]laintiff acquired no such rights [as a putative
spouse], since the evidence discloses that she knew [that the] deceased and defendant had
not been divorced and was thus aware that the marriage between her and the deceased was
not legal.” Daniels v. Ret. Bd. of Policeman’s Annuity & Benefit Fund , 435 N.E.2d 1276,
1280 (Ill. 1982) (emphasis added). Minnesota’s presumption requires the same approach
and compels the same result.
The majority’s second legal error is relying exclusively on the evidence that Mace
and Tamara often held themselves out as being married in various documents—contracting
to buy property together, filing tax returns together, and so on. At most, this evidence has
some bearing on the first question raised by the putative -spouse statute, which is whether
Tamara subjectively believed she was legally married as she began her marriage. But it
does nothing to answer the critical second question, which is whether, at some point after
Tamara developed a good -faith belief that she was legally married to Mace, she acquired
knowledge that she was not legally married to him. The evidence that Mace and Tamara
signed documents expressing themselves as a married couple is wholly irrelevant to this
second question. Once Tamara acquired the knowledge in 1991 that Mace was still married
to Beulah, her previous good-faith belief that she was legally married ended along with her
status as a putative spouse, and that status could be restored only by some marriage -

D-7

creating event, like a wedding. The couple’s joint documents holding themselves out as
married are not marriage -creating events. At most they are marriage -representing events.
They are incapable of restoring Tamara as a putative spouse under the statute, regardless
of how numerous they may be.
In sum, I believe that one incontrovertible and unambiguous fact resolves th is
dispute: Tamara discovered two years after she married Mace that Mace was still married
to Beulah and had been so married at the time of Tamara and Mace’s ceremony. This
revelation ended any claimed right to spousal maintenance as a putative spouse beca use,
as a matter of law and of common sense, every person knows she cannot consummate a
legal marriage to an already-married man. We should reverse.