Husband who was 31 years older secretly divorced wife after wedding 'to protect assets

York and France. It was all perfect, except for one
thing: He had secretly divorced her just months
after their wedding, in an apparent attempt to
shield his assets.
Now Cristina Carta Villa, 59, is suing her 90-year-
old “husband,” Gabriel Villa, to nullify the divorce
she never knew about and keep him from selling
an apartment they shared.
The two met at a friend’s house, quickly tying the
knot in a New York ceremony in 1994. She left
her job teaching Italian literature at Boston
College to be with the lawyer and travel agent
more than 30 years her senior.
“He was absolutely charming, and despite
our age difference, it was love at first
sight,” says Cristina Carta Villa.
But all the while, Gabriel was apparently hedging
his bets. Four months after the pair tied the knot,
Gabriel Villa secretly arranged for a divorce in the
Dominican Republic.
The wife says she never knew about, let alone
consented to, a Dominican divorce, which was
never registered in New York.
“It’s a fraud,” she tells The Post.
The two bought a one-bedroom condo on West
55th Street; had a son, Lorenzo; and divided their
time among Manhattan, Massachusetts and
France.
“It was and somehow it’s still a great love,”
Cristina Villa says. “Gabriel is a very
charismatic man, strong, intelligent and
very charming. I think we could say I was a
loving and caring wife and mother.”
When her husband was ill in the hospital, Cristina
says, “I was always at his side.” He even made
her his health-care proxy and gave her power of
attorney.
But Gabriel allegedly told Dominican authorities
life with his wife was “unbearable,” Cristina now
alleges in court papers.
Even though the couple didn’t live in the
Dominican Republic, Gabriel launched the legal
dissolution there. He hired lawyers to represent
each spouse and cited “incompatibility of
temperaments” as the reason for the split,
Cristina claims in a Manhattan Supreme Court
lawsuit.
Cristina found out about it only in November
when a tax bill arrived for their Manhattan home
and her name wasn’t on it. She hired a lawyer to
investigate, only to learn that Gabriel had tried to
remove her name from the deed, using the
Dominican Republic proceeding as proof she was
not an owner, she charges.
The wife says in court papers she “has no
recollection of [giving] any authorization to
anyone to proceed with a divorce, or even thinking
about divorce from the man she had just recently
married.” If legal authority was given, she was
either “surreptitiously impaired, drugged or
misled” into giving it, claim court papers.
“I realize now that during all these years of
joy and happiness, and of difficult moments
we shared together, my husband lied to me
and had the Dominican divorce on the back
of his mind. It’s what is hurting me the
most,” she says.
The divorce isn’t even legal in the Dominican
Republic, Cristina argues, because neither spouse
appeared in the court, and the split wasn’t
published in a newspaper as required under
Dominican law.
Cristina believes greed is behind the divorce
duplicity.
Gabriel is “using an illegal and fraudulent divorce
. . . to rob her,” Cristina charges.
She believes her husband wants to sell the
apartment to his adult daughter, Marina Villa,
who lives in Rome. One-bedroom condos in the
Midtown building sell for roughly $1.4 million,
records show.