If a state refuses to recognize gay marriages but are willing to recognize gay separation agreements haven't they, in fact, created something substantially similar to divorce?
Doesn't that, in turn, mean that the state recognized the validity of the original union as substantially similar to marriage?
1 comment:
Short answer; No.
Basically it sounds like the Judge treated the seperation agreement like any other contractual partnership agreement with a common dissolution clause. Kind of like the same treatment you would get from a court if you had a partnership agreement with a platonic friend that called for certain terms when the partnership (informal roofing company, symbiotic living arraingment, or legally organized business...etc.)dissolved. Nowhere in her decision does it imply that any third party to the agreement had to recognize said partnership.
So in essence she said; you guys made an agreement (contract), you both received a benefit from that agreement (consideration), your agreement is dissolved and you both had agreed to certain terms upon dissolution (liquidated damages).
At least without reading her rationale for the decision that is what it sounds like to me from the small article. Very interesting legal situation though. Obvisouly the lawyer for the appealing party will try to turn her decision in one that makes it look like she de facto recognized an illegal marriage by recognizing the dissolution staratgey to the partnership/marriage/whatever.
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