A Question About The Divorce Process (probably legal advice needed)

I was chatting with a coworker about her divorce that was finalized on Dec 20, 2017. She was expecting to be divorced and happy to be divorced, but she was puzzled that she was never notified about the divorce, never received any documents or requests for information, and never took any action such as appearing in court or signing anything. She said the only notification that she got about the divorce was a copy of the final judgement (if that's the right term) that her ex-husband sent her in an email.

She never hired a lawyer because while she knew they were planning to divorce, she didn't know that he was actually in the process of divorcing her. She said she didn't know any of this was going on until her ex sent her the email with the copy of the court order and by then the whole thing was over (which she was generally happy about).

We were talking about her concerns regarding the divorce: She wondered if it was legitimate since she had so little to do with it and has "zero" trust in her ex-husband at all.

We tried looking for a record of the divorce on the Harris County District Clerk's website. We had difficulty finding it so I asked to see the document that her ex sent to her via email. She was willing to show it to me.

The document looked like a real Harris County Court Record document but we still had trouble finding the case. We eventually found the divorce record by searching for all cases filed under the name of the attorney and his BAR number that were listed on the divorce decree.

We were able to find the divorce case this way. (All of this difficulty in finding the record may be just due to my inexperience using the Clerk's website and some quirkiness of the site.)

So we found the case and she's satisfied that she is actually legally and legitimately divorced from her ex, who has since returned to his home country. Yay for her!

But– she said that while they didn't have children or property to divide, she did get stuck with her ex-husband's credit card debt when he left the country. She paid that debt understanding that debt accrued in marriage is the responsibility of both parties and since her ex left the country shortly after the divorce, she just got unfairly stuck with his bills. (I don't know how much debt he left behind. I just called her to ask but she's not in right now).

Both of us are puzzled about how her ex-husband managed to divorce her without her participating in the process. She said that had she known about his filing for the divorce she certainly would have attempted to get at least half of the credit card debt from him in the process.

The records at the HCDC website are restricted (That's unusual when kids are not involved, isn't it? Or is it not unusual?), but we can see the various filings.

There is the original petition, a family process pick up form, an amended petition, a citation (executed), a certificate of last known address, a non-military affidavit, a proposed final order, a notice to all litigants, a default judgement signed, and two notices of activity listed as the filings in the case.

Under the "Services/Notices" tab on the HCDC website, it shows that the "service/return executed" of the "amended original petition" was "issued", "served" and then "received by the clerk", and there is a tracking number- all of which seems normal as far as we can tell- but under the "deliver to" column it says "attorney pick up".

What does this mean? I think it means that her ex and his attorney attempted to notify her of the divorce proceeding by certified mail but that the letter was returned as undelivered and that her ex's attorney then collected the undelivered certified letter.

(Special note: she never moved from the home the couple shared while married so her ex certainly knew her address.)

So our question is: How is it possible to divorce someone without their participating in the process?

Is this normal or common?

She's thinking that her ex-husband and his attorney conspired to keep her uninformed of the divorce so that her ex could leave the country and leave her with his credit card debt.

I suggested she call the State Bar to ask if this case was handled correctly but neither of us know much about the legal process and I doubt there is much that can be done about it at this time anyway, but doesn't it smell like something unethical happened here?

I'm thinking someone owes her half of her ex's left-behind credit card debt and that perhaps the attorney should offer to pay since the ex is long gone. If that off-base?

Thoughts?