David Lance Wilson struck out in his attempt to get the Iowa courts to hold that a provision in his late sister’s will leaving her entire estate to her long-time partner, Susan Woodall Fisher, was automatically revoked when the women allegedly split up nine years before the sister’s death. Affirming a summary judgment ruling by Crawford County District Judge Patrick H. Tott, the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled on February 7 in Estate of … <Read More>
New York’s Domestic Relations Law, Section 230, sets residency requirements for married couples seeking to divorce in the state, which vary in length – one or two years — depending upon whether they were married in New York and have lived in the state continuously. This creates a problem for out-of-state same-sex couples who come to New York to marry and then return to a home jurisdiction that does not recognize same-sex marriages. The problem … <Read More>
When the Supreme Court says it’s done, then it’s done, right? Well, not necessarily in Mississippi, where resistance to the impact and consequences of marriage equality lingers. In recent days, the Mississippi Supreme Court has weighed in — sort of — on gay divorce, and a trial judge in Hinds County heard arguments about the state’s continuing ban on “same-sex” adoption.
The divorce case, Czekala v. State, No. 2014-CA-00008-SCT (Nov. 5, 2015), involves a lesbian … <Read More>
With a ruling on same-sex marriage from the United States Supreme Court just days away, the Texas Supreme Court finally acted on June 19, 2015, on a pair of appeals argued nineteen months ago in November 2013, holding in State v. Naylor, 2015 Tex. LEXIS 581, that the state’s attorney general did not have standing to appeal an Austin trial judge’s order granting a judgment “intended to be a substitute for a valid and subsisting … <Read More>
The Court of Appeals of Indiana ruled on December 20 that an existing different-sex marriage is not rendered void when one of the spouses has obtained a legal judgment of gender change. Reversing a ruling by Judge Valeri Haughton of the Monroe Circuit Court, Judge Paul Mathias wrote for the court in Davis v. Summers that this construction of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage would be “beyond the purview of our constitutional authority to … <Read More>