Common-law wife of 35 years sues to be treated as spouse

A common-law wife for 35 years of a retiree who passed away is suing the CNMI government and the NMI Retirement Fund for allegedly not giving her retirement benefits as a “surviving spouse.”

Joaquina Reyes Santos, through counsel Juan T. Lizama, asked the Superior Court to order the NMI Retirement Fund to treat her as a spouse under the Retirement Law.

Santos asked the court to declare as unconstitutional as applied to Santos the law that defines “spouse” as someone who is legally married.

She demanded an award of attorney’s fees.

Lizama stated in the complaint that Santos and Cristin Cabrera Duenas lived together as common law wife and husband from 1974 until the latter died in 2009.

Lizama said that during the time of their uninterrupted cohabitation, the common law spouses handled themselves in the same manner as married couples by comingling and sharing their incomes, holding themselves as husband and wife before friends and relatives, bearing eight children together, and maintaining their home as a conjugal home.

Duenas was employed by the CNMI government for 28 years beginning at the time when the common-law couple began living together.

In 2002, Duenas retired and began to receive his retirement benefits. In April 2009, he died.

Lizama said that in 2014 the Retirement Fund decided to allow surviving spouses to claim and withdraw retirement contributions of their deceased spouses.

As the surviving spouse of Duenas, Santos has neither received any benefits prior to nor after the Retirement Fund’s amendment in 2014 to allow surviving spouses to claim and withdraw retirement contributions of their deceased spouses, Lizama said.

He said the Retirement Fund apparently did not consider Santos eligible because the law defines “spouse” as one who is legally married.

In 2007, Lizama said, the Legislature passed Public Law 15-69 after determining that there is no legitimate interest in discriminating spouses in a common-law situation from those who are legally married.

Under the newly enacted law, Lizama said, no distinction was given by the Legislature in the treatment of employee’s “legal or common-law spouses.”

“The laws of common laws are part of CNMI laws under the Covenant and the support of common-law spouses under general common laws have grown over the years in the more than the majority of states of the United States,” he said.

As applied to Santos, the lawyer said, the law violates the equal protection clause of the CNMI Constitution and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

He asserted that Santos is entitled to a mandatory injunction that the Fund deems her a spouse entitled to the benefits under the retirement law.

Lizama said that Santos is entitled to the benefits from the time Duenas died until the present, the amount of which will be proven in court.