Take a look at this:
“When Jason Dottley and his husband ended their marriage last year, neither bothered to hire a lawyer because the couple agreed they had nothing to fight over.”
"Lawyers are what you get when things get difficult," Dottley figured.
He had no idea just how difficult getting a same-sex divorce would be.
Dottley, an actor and singer, filed for divorce in April 2012 in California, where the court system was unfamiliar with how to handle his case. He eventually sought an attorney's advice after growing frustrated with the numerous delays.
"The lawyer I hired really couldn't offer much help," he said. "His advice was basically, you can either keep plugging away or you can pay me to plug away, but until the courts figure out what they're doing, I can't speed this along for you any more than you can."
It's a story familiar to a growing number of same-sex couples, even as the gay community continues to celebrate the Supreme Court's decision in June to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. Many hope the ruling will encourage more states to legalize gay marriage, which is currently only legal in 13 states as well as the District of Columbia.
Carolyn Satenberg, a New York-based family law attorney, estimates that same-sex couples usually pay twice as much for divorces as their heterosexual counterparts. Triple the price if children are involved.
"By default, either one or both of the parents are not the biological parent. And that brings in an entirely new set of legal problems if the couple hasn't taken the appropriate steps to secure legal standing," Satenberg said. "Some couples think, 'Oh, we love each other. We're going to stay together forever.' They don't really think, 'I should adopt my son, I should adopt my daughter.'"
(…)Since divorce is usually granted to couples by the state where they live, states that do not recognize gay marriages typically won't grant a divorce to a couple whose marriage they view as unlawful. That means individuals would have to return to the state where they got married to get a divorce, but that can be a financial and personal hardship, since many of these states have at least a 6-month minimum residency requirement for divorce applicants.
(…)Elizabeth Schwartz, a Miami attorney who works primarily with gay and lesbian families, said it's time for the nation to start addressing divorce laws for same-sex couples. Otherwise, some people may start to disregard the law altogether.
"What some couples are doing, and it's really frightening, is saying, 'Well, I live in Florida, and marriage isn't recognized here anyway, so what's the difference? I'm just going to get married in this new relationship. The other one — who cares?'" she said. "Well, I'm sorry, that's bigamy."
( Taken from an article by Eun Kyung Kim, NBC Today)
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