Couple seeking to undo divorce gets turned down

CONCORD, N.H. — Should those irreconcilable differences suddenly become reconcilable, don’t go looking to get un-divorced in New Hampshire.

The state’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling refusing to vacate a New Castle couple’s 2014 divorce after 24 years of marriage.

Terrie Harmon and her ex-husband, Thomas McCarron, argued on appeal that their divorce decree was erroneous because they mended fences and are a couple once more. But the justices, in a unanimous ruling issued Dec. 2, said the law specifically allows them to grant divorces — not undo them.

Courts in some states — including Illinois, Nebraska, Mississippi, Arkansas, Maryland and Kentucky — will vacate divorces within a certain time frame or under certain circumstances. Others — including New York and South Dakota — maintain they, like New Hampshire, have no statutory authority to undo a divorce.

Attorney Joshua Gordon, appointed to defend the lower court’s ruling, said allowing the couple’s divorce to be undone could jeopardize the finality of all divorces.

“Divorce is a uniquely fraught area of litigation,” he argued. “For divorced couples, it is often important to have the solace of knowing that their former spouse is indeed former.”

Harmon and McCarron did not return calls seeking the answer to the question: Why not just remarry?

They were married in 1989 and filed for divorce in January 2014; the divorce decree was finalized in July that same year. In March, they filed a joint motion to vacate the decree.