When I worked for a tribunal, between a quarter and a third of all incoming petitioners did not know the whereabouts of the spouse respondent. (Granted, this was pre-internet.) Among those who did know where to locate the respondent, half stated that they did not expect that the respondent would cooperate, and that was generally the case, with a handful of exceptions.
So long as the petitioner could provide the necessary documents to initiate the case:
- petitioner’s baptismal certificate (or confirmation certificate for converts who had been baptized in another denomination), to establish that he or she was a Catholic
- civil marriage certificate, to establish that the putative marriage had taken place legally
- church marriage certificate, to establish that proper Catholic form had been followed
- civil divorce certificate, to establish that the putative marriage was no longer in effect legally
The case was accepted and initiated. Absentee respondents delayed, but did not prevent, the case from moving toward completion. Every good faith effort was made to locate the spouse–the tribunal contracted a private detective agency to assist in locating respondents, and they pulled public records, etc. When located, letters were sent via certified mail; some were signed for, while others came back unclaimed. In either case, the case proceeded.
Occasionally, statements made by the petitioner during the documentary phase were such that additional efforts were made during the deliberation process to get the respondent to reply–even if with only a single letter, rather than all of the forms–though the tribunal never revealed specifics of what the petitioner had stated. Most of these efforts were also unsuccessful, and the tribunal considered the unresponsiveness or inability to locate as a lack of evidence to the contrary. Eventually the case was completed, with only testimony from the petitioner and his or her witnesses. This was fairly common, and it resembled the efforts made to locate respondents in civil courts.
