For most persons, divorce is an experience they would pay to forget. For actor Ben Vereen, who did just that, it cost him at least $10,000 in attorney fees.
Vereen, 70, a Tony Award-winning actor, married Andrea Townsley in 1965, when he was 18 and she was 14 and after the couple had a child. According to court papers, they separated shortly after they were married but maintained an on-again, off-again relationship for the following decade.
Both parties remarried; Vereen had five children with his second wife. However, in 2015, Townsley contacted Vereen and said they had unfinished business: She had attempted to get Social Security and was told that she was still married to Vereen.
The case attracted some unflattering media attention for Vereen: "Ben Vereen revealed to be a bigamist," blared the headline in the New York Post.
After the matter could not be solved through an agreement, Vereen sued for divorce. Harold Mayerson of Mayerson Abramowitz & Kahn, who represented Townsley in the case, pulled the files for divorces filed by Vereen and Townsley in 1972 and 1974, respectively and it turned out that a judgment of divorce had been entered in 1974.
In an order granting $10,000 in attorney fees to Mayerson Abramowitz, as well as $7,500 that Vereen provided as an advance, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Sunshine gave the parties a judicial shake of the head.
"It mystifies the court as to how these two parties, absent proof to the contrary, could 'forget' that they had been divorced previously and then proceed to engage in significant litigation," Sunshine said.
Patricia Hennessey of Hennessey & Bienstock was Vereen's attorney-of-record in the case in the proceedings before Sunshine.