When her three-year-old marriage broke up, the 44-year-old doctor assumed she and her ex would split their property and jointly parent their two children. Her stay-at-home spouse wanted sole custody and the right to move the children out of Massachusetts.
In pretrial motions, both parents made the same argument to a judge: The children should be with me; I’m their mother.
For years, family court judges leaned toward a maternal preference when it came to custody disputes. But what to do when both parents are women, or neither is? Judges in Massachusetts have been grappling with that question since gay and lesbian couples began filing for divorce in 2004, seven months after the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage…
And it gets worse with divorce, since Clinton and the bi-partisan Congress Clucks passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, states needn’t recognize same-sex marriages from another state. Which means they needn’t divorce those couples either.
If they aren’t recognizing the marriages, then doesn’t that mean they recognize the divorce by default?
I would say that states that don’t recognize gay marriage would actually say that they’re pretty much not real. So they would just petition the court to annul because the marriage wasn’t valid.
Mike,
You have to be married to get a divorce. A divorce implements legal conditions on the participants. It would be more correct to say that if a state does not recognize marriage it does not recognize the legally imposed conditions.
That will be 2-cents please…
As far as the “full faith and credit” thing goes, I do think that it’s perfectly reasonable to say that State A, which doesn’t allow marriage between homosexuals, should not be required to provide marriage related benefits or privileges to persons just because State B does choose to.
But it would really be a stretch to say I even care about this whole debate.
So, let’s suppose they claim that no state of marriage existed because of the Defense of Marriage Act. There is a still an issue of property and custody that has to be resolved. It’s as if marriage is merely a legal partnership or something ;->
An old Jewish proverb: When you know who you love, get married. When you want to know who you married, get divorced.
I would think that the biological mother would be able to claim motherhood leagally, that could be proven. Otherwise I’d consult Solomans wisdom.
Discriminating between men and women, gay and straight is getting more difficult to administer and keep track of.
Good.
So if some state recognize same sex marriage and other states don’t recognize same sex marriage, does that mean that under certain circumstances polyamory marriage is now legal?
So you could get gay married in massachusets, then move to michigan and get married again, as long as it was hetro, and technically you have three people in a marriage.
Then, pretty soon here, California will legalize dog and cattle marriage, and those polyamory charts start getting REALLY complex.
I for see a market in charting software for figuring out these new marriage arrangements.
Isn’t it amazing that something SO idiotically simple can be made so complex. 🙂
Let the State/Federal govs marry any two legal adults who want to join their lives (and property) together (ie. suckers)
The only reason you wouldn’t tend to allow polygamous marriages is because the property/custody/legal issues become exponentially more complicated with each addition. Even though polygamous marriage is the most traditional, longest existing and original form of marriage…only recently supplanted recently by the hippy liberal modern idea of one man and ONE woman based on hippy love (not arranged family joining).
Let the Churches marry who they want. Hindu’s don’t have to marry Muslims. Catholics don’t have to marry Wicken. etc. If you find a Church/Temple or Flying Spaghetti Monster that will give a magical blessing, fun for you. But that has not a god damn thing to do with the courts and the legal contracts for property/custody.
Olde ways, be best. Next time, get a cat.
The real crime here is that people are allowed to use the “I’m the mother” argument in court at all!
What’s wrong with fathers (other mothers)?
Wouldn’t it be nice if the biological father showed up and further complicated this issue?
/Bitter dad rant
Oh…that’s right, he doesn’t have a vagina, he doesn’t qualify.
/bitter dad rant off
Oh, this is funny.
Maybe we need a formal marriage contract to use as a default contract, modifiable by a pre-nuptual. The feds can say “we consider you married if you sign this contract. If you don’t, then all taxes, benifits, etc will be as if the two of you are single, and the children are sole dependants of one of you.”
Well, as a place to start the argument.
#15,
How much you wana bet he gets nailed with child support even if he doesn’t show?
#12
What the hell you trying to say here?
First you say
“Let the State/Federal govs marry any two legal adults who want to join their lives (and property) together (ie. suckers)”
and then you say
“Let the Churches marry who they want.”
The Pro-Gay churches were already marring Gay couple but the were not legal.
This the part that throws me “But that has not a god damn thing to do with the courts and the legal contracts for property/custody.”
The Pro-Gay Marriage people want the legal contract stuff. or you saying that Churches should be able legal marry people. I case you don’t know you still have to get a marriage license if you get married in a church. It just that the Priest/or who ever is legally able to sign the marriage license.
So the last part of you rant makes no sense to me.
These days if anyone can make a marriage work out reasonably well, no matter how weird or straight the arrangement, well more power to them and good luck.
Pictures, video or it never happened.
The Defense of Marriage Act opens up a problem in that it treads upon States Rights. The Constitution requires ALL the various States to honor and respect the judicial rulings made in other States. Since the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court ruled that homosexual marriage is legal, all these people were married under a judicial ruling and the marriages dutifully recorded..
Article IV
Section One
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.