Advising Ann Landers

            I have always enjoyed the various advice columns that appear in newspapers and magazines. Ann Landers (Ask Ann Landers) and Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby), twin sisters, entertained and enlightened their readers long before there was an Internet to provide answers to life's problems.

            In January of 1991, I was in my office at the Courthouse when I received a phone call from a woman (I don't recall her name) who told me she worked for Ann Landers and that she had been referred to me by someone at the Ohio Supreme Court. She asked if I could help with the response to a letter that Ms. Landers had received. I said I would if I could.

            She read me that letter. It seems that a young lady had been dating a married man for several months while he was going through the process of obtaining a divorce somewhere in Ohio. He had reassured her that his intention was to marry her when he was free and able. As the date of his final hearing approached, she had asked him about the possibility of setting a date for their nuptials.

            He told her that he could not marry her as soon as his divorce was final, because he had been advised by his lawyer that Ohio had a year-long "waiting period" after a divorce, during which the newly-divorced parties were not permitted to obtain a marriage license.

            My caller asked, "Is that true?"

            "No," I told her. "In fact, I have knowledge of couples who proceeded immediately from my courtroom where one of them had just been divorced to Probate Court to obtain a license and get married as soon as they could." It sounded to me like a dodge on the part of the boyfriend to avoid his commitment to the letter writer.

            She thanked me for my time and told me to watch Ms. Lander's column for the letter and the response. On January 27, 1991, I read the opened the newspaper and there it was. Was there a waiting period in Ohio? Ann Landers wrote, "No. According to Judge Ron Solove of the Domestic Relations Court Franklin County after a divorce is final there is no waiting period before a person may remarry in Ohio." She went on to suggest that the letter writer consider the sincerity of her male friend.

            Somewhere in the archives of "Ask Ann Landers" rests my brush with advice-to-the-lovelorn fame.