It may not be on their minds as they walk down the aisle in Massachusetts, but along with gifts and toasts many gay couples are finally getting one of the biggest benefits of matrimony: the ability to obtain a clean divorce.
Because their unions were not legally binding, gay couples have had few protections when they split and have had to rely on the inconsistent mercy of judges to obtain alimony, parental rights or a stake in the couple's finances.
"The single most important thing you get with marriage is divorce, a predictable process by which property is divided, debt is apportioned and arrangements are made for custody and visitation of children," said Jo Ann Citron, a Boston lawyer researching a book on same-sex breakups called The Gay Divorcee.
Especially when children are involved, courts in liberal-leaning states such as Massachusetts, California and Washington have been increasingly willing to apply the principles of divorce laws to same-sex breakups.
But in more conservative states such as Texas and Virginia, judges have been loath to do anything that would confer marital-like standing on same-sex couples, even when partners have drawn up detailed contracts.
"The situation right now has created horror stories, where people put an awful lot of ... equity into property and into a life together, never held title to anything and got nothing," Citron said.
The clearest benefits will be for those who earn less than their same-sex partners, said Frederick Hertz, a real estate lawyer in Oakland, California, who has developed a lucrative specialty resolving legal disputes among the San Francisco Bay area's relatively affluent gay population.
Hertz recently represented a lesbian who had become a stay-at-home mother while her girlfriend climbed the corporate ladder. When they split up, the employed partner refused to include stock options among their joint assets.
"We got a decent settlement, but decent compared to nothing, not decent compared to what she would have gotten had they been married," Hertz said. "Access to marriage may level that playing field."
Gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts on Monday under a landmark ruling by the state's highest court. Vermont has granted spousal rights to gay couples with civil unions since 2000, making it the only other state where gays and lesbians are treated the same as married couples for the purposes of divorce.
In California, a law scheduled to take effect Jan. 1 would give the state's 25,000 couples registered as domestic partners access to family court proceedings when their relationships end.
"At the present time it is a very mixed sort of picture," said Art Leonard, a professor at New York Law School who monitors court rulings involving gays.
Couples who drafted agreements with a lawyer's help may be able to provide courts with rules to interpret. But problems arise when "they are just living together," Leonard said. "There is basically nothing there as far as a legal framework."
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
UNCERTAIN TOLLS: Images on social media showed small protests that escalated, with reports of police shooting live rounds as polling stations were targeted Tanzania yesterday was on lockdown with a communications blackout, a day after elections turned into violent chaos with unconfirmed reports of many dead. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan had sought to solidify her position and silence criticism within her party in the virtually uncontested polls, with the main challengers either jailed or disqualified. In the run-up, rights groups condemned a “wave of terror” in the east African nation, which has seen a string of high-profile abductions that ramped up in the final days. A heavy security presence on Wednesday failed to deter hundreds protesting in economic hub Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, some
Flooding in Vietnam has killed at least 10 people this week as the water level of a major river near tourist landmarks reached a 60-year high, authorities said yesterday. Vietnam’s coastal provinces, home to UNESCO world heritage site Hoi An ancient town, have been pummeled by heavy rain since the weekend, with a record of up to 1.7m falling over 24 hours. At least 10 people have been killed, while eight others are missing, the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said. More than 128,000 houses in five central provinces have been inundated, with water 3m deep in some areas. People waded through
RSS