Texas Divorce News

I just saw a Reuters story about a New York court making a unanimous ruling. Even though New York does not have same-sex marriages, the courts there must recognize a same-sex marriage performed elsewhere (in this case, Canada), unless the state passes legislation to the contrary. This particular case involved a Lesbian couple, married in Canada, who then moved to New York. One of the couple worked for a company that refused to give spousal health insurance benefits because the "married couple" wasn't one each male and female.

Texas classifies some marriages as "void" or "voidable." For instance, a purported marriage when one of the parties is already married to someone else (bigamy) is a void marriage, and instead of filing for divorce to terminate that marriage, one files a Petition to Declare Marriage Void. However, a purported marriage of folks of the same gender would simply be no marriage at all: by state law, a marriage is between a man and a woman.

There are movements afoot to change our constitution both ways. Some want to change the constitution to allow same-sex marriage, and others want to change the constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.