Same-Sex Divorce challenges legal system
Inconsistent laws guarantee
lawsuits.
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.
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.
Posted: Thu - January 3, 2008 at 08:57 AM