In a country where, roughly, one-third of all marriages end in divorce, people seem curiously naive about the procedure - especially, about what constitutes the end of a marriage.
Nowhere is this ignorance in higher evidence than on Digital Spy Soaps forum, where various people input their own (often wrong) asserted facts about divorce, intent, love, marriage, Uncle Tom Cobley etc, when those facts are nothing more than opinion, trussed up and presented as fact.
Well, as an American politician once said, you're more than entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts.
Let's take marriage for example. Marriage is a civil union. Doesn't matter whether you're married by a vicar or a priest or a rabbi or an imam in a church, synagogue or mosque, the man or woman performing the service has to hold a civil licence to do so. Registrars, or rather, marriage celebrants, are licenced to do so as well. Actually, in some countries, like France, the only marriage ceremony recognised as valid is the civil ceremony, performed by the mayor or town official licenced to do so, at the good old Town Hall. The church service, performed afterward, is just window dressing. Marry in a church in France, and you're not legally hitched.
Because marriage is a civil union wherein a contract (or licence) is duly signed, it's a legal contractual act; therefore, it takes a legal enactment to dissolve a marriage - hence, divorce.
It doesn't matter if you split with your wife or husband, until the papers are signed, by both parties and you are in possession of your decree absolute, you are not free to marry again. It doesn't matter what your intentions are, you simply are not unmarried until you get the legal piece of paper, telling you that you most definitely have legally finished with that union.
This whole kerfuffle of which person is in the wrong - basely put, who's the innocent party here, Tanya or Kirsty? - is being hotly contested on this thread.
However, a clearer, more concise definition of the Tanya-Max-Kirsty situation and how Max and Kirsty are still legally bound - indeed, a shortcourse in "Divorce for Dummies" - is brilliantly explained by the commenter elliecat on the second page of that thread:-
Lets put it simply for those that don't seem to understand. Max is still legally married to Kirsty ergo she is his wife and he was about to commit bigamy by marrying Tanya. Max has been divorced before so he knows how the damn thing works and knows he would need the decree absolute(and he would have also known that he didn't even get the decree nisi) and as Kirsty did not sign the divorce papers he would not have that and is therefore not legally allowed to marry Tanya. Also lets not forget that Tanya told Max that he had to put her children before Bradley (Rachel refused to let him see Bradley anyway but Tanya was a self-centred cow for even telling Max to give up Bradley). Now she knows how Rachel must have felt.
Also someone has mentioned Tanya has more right to Max's money and possessions but she doesn't. They aren't married(they were divorced and things would have been legally dealt with then and as she has been married again she would get laughed out of court) and she actually has no legal rights to anything other than child maintenance. I know because when I bought my house with my partner our solicitor made us aware that as we weren't married I am legally entitled to nothing not even his share of the house as that would go to his family even when we have children it would go to the children and not to me. To make sure that I would get it we would have to draw up a will stating our intentions.
Fighting for your husband who dumped you with a phone call in a strange city does not make you a whore or any other vile words that have been thrown about on here. And her turning up on Christmas day saved saint Tanya from being married to a bigamist. Kirsty isn't in the wrong, Max is and Tanya is trying to bribe Kirsty to leave so that hardly makes her any better
Later, elliecat recalls a scene from the mid-Nineties between Sharon and Michelle, when Sharon's decree absolute came, and she remarked that now she could go back to being Sharon Watts. As elliecat says, EastEnders knows how to do divorce.
Here's a further, more recent body of proof ... from 2003: Alfie needs his divorce finalised before he can marry Kat. The registrar insists on seeing it. He has to contact his wife in order to see about finalising the divorce, as it's only got to the decree nisi stage.
Fast forward to Alfie's and Kat's wedding day - Christmas Day 2003, the 8:36 mark, to be precise. Alfie doesn't have his decree absolute to present to the registrar, so he cannot marry Kat. Until his solicitor shows up with the magic document.
So, yes, EastEnders knows about divorce and re-marriage - and this was under Berridge. The sloppiness came in with Diedrich Santer. Is Roxy divorced from Sean? He disappeared four years ago, and no one knows where he is. What about Janine and Ryan? Kirkwood thought he'd sewn that one up by having Janine mention that Ryan eventually wanted a divorce, but they married in late September 2010, and he had disappeared, on the run for Rob's murder in August 2011 - too early to begin proceedings. At least we saw Jack's divorce papers from Ronnie.
As for some people's assumption that Kirsty should have just shrugged her shoulders at Max's desertion of her, signed the divorce papers and chalked that fling up to experience, all I can say is that I can only imagine these people have never been married, much less fallen in love or had a serious relationship.
It's one thing to try to claw back an uncommitted relationship that's dying - reference Kim and Ray; marriage is another thing entirely.
Max and Tanya had been divorced for awhile when he left Walford in August 2011. In case anyone forgets, Tanya was married to Greg and was cheating on him with Max. The truth about the affair came out at the same time she got the results saying she had cancer. Tanya used this situation to manipulate her daughters and her putrid mother into believing that Max had forced her into an affair, allowing Lauren to dictate to Max about leaving Walford. But forever. As in never to return.
So whenever or wherever Max met Kirsty, he was foot-loose and fancy-free. For whatever reason, they bonded. Yes, Kirsty learned that he had three children. She learned their names and their foibles. She knew he was divorced. For whatever reason, they fell in love, and married in good faith.
Jack called Max back to Walford because Carol was concerned when she saw Tanya, drunk and buying drinks for an underaged Lauren in the Vic. Instead of heading straight back home, Max and Derek decided to stop off to check out the situation en route to Manchester. It was, for lack of a better word, a glorified pitstop. In fact,
Here's the moment of Max's return:-
There's actually one point later on where Max remarks that he hasn't missed being called Dad, but the pure fact is that Max, initially, called in on his way to a new life (with a new wife waiting in Manchester) to see what all Jack's fuss was about.
Max only decided to stay when he found out Tanya had cancer. In that moment, he put his children's needs before his own, but before long, he was settling back into the old familiar. He was familiar with Tanya, she was responding to him and his declaration of love, and she was
the mother of three of his children.
Max deals with difficulty best by avoiding it, and it helps if it's far away - out of sight, out of mind. When Tanya demanded that he put her children before Bradley (even then, she was jealous and insecure of the hold Bradley - and by extension, Rachel - would have on Max), Rachel actually enabled Tanya more, because she actually forbade Max access to his son. To make the best of a bad situation, Max moved away from the area. Now, faced with the decision to stay with Tanya, he simply calls Kirsty, his new wife, and tells her their marriage is over.
I don't know what Kirsty did during the ensuing year, but Max would have had to wait until a year had passed before filing for divorce. Maybe she tried contacting him. Maybe she didn't know where he was. Derek was in touch with her, however, at Max's behest. He told her, brutally, and in no uncertain terms, that Max was through with her. When she told him she was pregnant, Derek told her to abort Max's child, because he'd never return. Knowing Derek, he probably even threatened her against calling or contacting Max.
So a year passes,and Max shoves divorce papers, with a large sum of money in an envelope, through Kirsty's letterbox.
People arguing that Max's marriage to Kirsty is over because of that are wrong. Hell, even Alfie and his first wife had proceeded further along their divorce trail in actually obtaining a decree nisi. Max didn't even get that, and he would have known as much. It doesn't matter what Derek told him, as a divorced man, he would have had to show his final decree to the registrar in able to marry Tanya. More importantly, Tanya would have had to show her decree absolute as well, proving she was definitely and finally divorced from Greg.
But despite all that, even with Kirsty being served with divorce papers, she and Max were still married, because she never signed the papers.
I challenge any of the Tanya-shippers on Digital Spy and elsewhere to tell me that if they married someone, and that someone abandoned them, pregnant and alone in a strange city, with no excuse given, if they wouldn't move hell and high water to find that husband who abandoned them - if only for a showdown face-to-face to hear his reasons for wanting to end the marriage.
Tuesday night, Kirsty handed Tanya her ass when challenged that she knew nothing of Max. Kirsty proved that she knew more about Max in three months of being together than Tanya knew in a lifetime. She certainly knows more about Max after three months than the insipid Sharon knows about Jack in as long a time. Kirsty would have known if Max were genuinely finished with her if he really were finished.
As things stand now, Max doesn't want to give up his comfort zone, especially since his three children inhabit that zone. He remembers how Tanya behaved in the aftermath of Stax. Right now, with Max, it's better the devil you know; but people are forgetting that Max told Kirsty on Christmas Day that he couldn't tell her face-to-face because he still had feelings for her and felt he might be tempted again. In other words, he still loves her; but he's with Tanya because to end that arrangement, would be far too complicated and messy, even though Tanya isn't his wife and would only be entitled to maintenance to support Oscar. Jack owns the house they rent from him. Max wouldn't even be coerced to pay the rent, because Tanya isn't his wife.
As various commentators have remarked, this is karma hitting Tanya big time, and it isn't as if she's not been warned. In the wake of Bradley's wedding preparations in 2007, Rachel warned Tanya that one day Tanya would "be" Rachel, that someone would do to her what Tanya had done to Rachel. Still, Tanya failed to see the similarities between her at eighteen and Stacey.
Tanya bearbaited Dawn Swann remorselessly when she was pregnant with Rob Minter's baby, never even thinking that years before, she was Dawn to Max's Rob. Cora's even handed her some home truths about how she deprived Bradley of a father, and still she hasn't listened.
Now, this woman shows up, with proof that she's Max's wife, and in the ultimate irony, Tanya finds - through her own selfish machinations in exiling Max back in August 2011 - that she is once again right back where she started: the other woman.
As for Kirsty, a lot of people are labelling her everything from a slut to a skank to a slapper to a full-on prostitute, based on her previous work as an "exotic dancer." On Christmas Day, when Tanya made the assumption that Kirsty was a stripper, Kirsty told her that in her routine, she didn't take off her clothes. In fact, she had been doing bar work lately.
People enter into professions such as exotic dancing, pole dancing or even stripping for a variety of reasons - in fact, many female students do this. The pay is good and the hours are amenable to their studies, and it helps with their educational expenses. I don't know what Kirsty's background is. Probably rough and working-class, but I think the real reason she spooks the Brannings, Tanya in particular, is because she reminds them of what they really are.
As someone commented on another of my blogs, Tanya dresses the part of the respectable middle-class mother, which is how she wants to be seen; but we know Tanya's real behaviour - bonking Sean Slater on the couch when Oscar lay upstairs crying, drunk out of her mind and swigging from a bottle in the street with Jane Beale. Always with an oversized wineglass in her hand, using anything as an excuse for a drink; always making everything about her, putting herself first before her children. The attempted murder, the drugging, prostituting herself to Sean Slater, living with Jack for an entire year, whilst she baited and humiliated Max and plotted to take his children out of the country. Shagging Max and laughing about her husband Greg, minding Max's and Tanya's son - referring to Greg as Bob the Builder. Thinking herself an independent businesswoman.
Kirsty, on the other hand, is Tanya, minus all the airs and graces and nice clothes. OK, Kirsty's probably never got anyplace in life without the help of a man along the way, and in the obvious way; but when you think about it ... neither has Tanya.
No comments:
Post a Comment