Divorce proceedings between legendary guitarist Slash and soon-to-be ex Perla Ferrar just got a whole lot more complicated. The intermittent Guns N’ Roses ax-man is reportedly claiming that they were never technically married in the first place.
According to TMZ, Slash, 51, has appealed to a judge to confirm that Ferrar, 41, was never legally divorced from her first marriage when they tied the knot in October 2001. Ferrar had married a man named Carlos Marty in 1993, but the union would prove to be a brief one. She filed for divorce just a month later, and believed herself single when she wed Slash.
Years later, when Slash and Ferrar were applying for dual citizenship for their son, Cash, they discovered that the divorce paperwork for the Marty marriage had not been properly filed and a final judgment had never been issued. Ferrar has since claimed that the problem was resolved in 2009, when a judge retroactively made her divorce valid dating back to 1994.
But as their own divorce acrimony continues, Slash is seemingly trying to use this legal technically to prove that they were never lawfully married, and Ferrar is therefore not entitled to half of the millions he earned during their marriage.
Slash first filed for divorce from Ferrar in August 2010, but they reconciled two months later. The pair split again more recently in December 2014. They have two sons together — London Emilio, 14, and Cash Anthony, 12.
Speaking to PEOPLE in 2009, Slash credited his wife with helping to keep him on the right track, acknowledging that after settling down and having kids, he got “rid of all the real hardcore stuff that I used to live on.”