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73 Comments
- Danik55, on 06/27/2009, -4/+56Wow, gay women are just like straight women. Gold diggers.
- darthbob, on 06/27/2009, -1/+36How can ye be divorced if ye not be married?
- inactive, on 06/27/2009, -2/+28As much as I support same sex marriage, if it's not official than neither of them should be obligated to give up their assets. Besides, marriage shouldn't be about divorcing and taking money like so many people do now. Way to make the rest of us gays look bad, Toni!
- Fasterthanthou, on 06/27/2009, -3/+22if you were never legally married, you cannot be legally divorced. the fact that this is a same sex couple is irrelevant. it would be like a straight man suing his girlfriend for separating even though they are not married.
- cfuse, on 06/27/2009, -2/+16I'm sorry, but if I'd spent years eating Martina's box I'd want some ***** coin too.
- undervalued, on 06/27/2009, -1/+15"Unofficially married" can be "unofficially divorced."
A solution to all this ***** would just be for marriage to stay completely out of the law arena. Then those who want to carry on the tradition can and those that don't can just live together. Just replace the marriage laws with ones about dual ownership property, none of this 50-50 crap, then you remove the marriage issue from law makers (whose business it is not). - ranon78, on 06/27/2009, -1/+13Divorce is a big byproduct of marriage
- aleone31, on 06/27/2009, -0/+10No divorce is sacred. Please save divorce.
- keraneuology, on 06/27/2009, -1/+9If you ever meet a family law practitioner who support gay marriages remember that this is why they have endorsed the concept.
- EntropyFan, on 06/27/2009, -0/+8Maybe. In many places here in the US, there is common law marriage.
Not sure if that applies here or not.
Regardless, it should be handled the exact same way as if it was a man and a woman. It seems they were a couple, and there may be legal responsibilities. - jftitan, on 06/27/2009, -0/+6over a 52% product return rate, I say I have to agree.
- rahsut, on 06/27/2009, -2/+8i don't care if they were legally married, what makes it fair for one person to take half her spouse's money when she hasn't earned it? i can understand some money being awarded but our divorce laws have done nothing but spawn gold diggers.
- ThatEvilGuy, on 06/27/2009, -3/+9DO NOT GET MARRIED!
Seriously, nowadays, it's a very risky thing to do. - The_Tate, on 06/27/2009, -0/+6I respect your viewpoints but the reason I'm digging you down is for your incredibly buffoonish grammar.
- cecirdr, on 06/27/2009, -1/+6As someone who got abandoned without warning and had to begin again with 2 dogs, a rental car, 12 boxes of stuff, and 8K dollars to rebuild a life after 12 years of a domestic partnership (and who's partner made over 100K per year)...here's my take on things.
There is a contract between two people who have chosen to enter into a long term relationship. Legally, one part of it is called an implied contract. All that the phrase "marriage" does is formalize that contract to include several legal precedents in one lump agreement called marriage. Without marriage, you do still have some (or all) of the legal stipulations, but you now have to *prove* they existed.
I think that if one partner is not officially working (say...you are the manager or executive secretary of a high flying spouse), you should be entitled (at a minimum) to be left at the same level of lifestyle you were able to create for yourself before the relationship and enough money to retrain yourself to maintain that level of lifestyle on your own thereafter.
Before my domestic partnership, I was earning what would be about 40K by today's standards. But I lived simply and had a reasonable lifestyle. After a jetsetting 12 years where we moved every 2 years and always to cities that had no work in my profession, I tried changing my career to something else only to find that I couldn't get far due to our constant moving. To top it off, we eventually sold the home and began full time RVing and then we began moving every few months! There was literally no way that I could work.
When I got dumped..literally without warning (over the phone and told her father would get the rig and I needed to be out in 2 weeks), I had hoped that my partner would at least see to it that I could get retrained for a work force that had changed a lot in 12 years, and help me pay for a small apartment and loan me one of the cars for a couple of years why I got the ball rolling again. But I was wrong. Due to being instantly poor, I could not afford to get a lawyer involved. I begged, pleaded, tried logic. Nothing worked. I found out she had a new girlfriend and bought her a vacation to Kaui and a new timeshare instead of helping me out.
So let's just say I'm not for gold digging, nor do I think that someone deserves wealth they didn't create. But they may have been more instrumental in creating a portion of that wealth than we know. Plus, no one deserves instant poverty when they had been able to be middle class in their former life. - JoeMondo, on 06/27/2009, -0/+5In hetero couples there have been successful"palimony" suits.
Same sex couples shouldn't be treated differently. - CanadianRealist, on 06/27/2009, -0/+5An unofficial couple can certainly separate as simply as they unofficially got together.
If they had taken the time to sign a simple "Cohabitation agreement" it would have solved all of the problems. It's like a prenuptial agreement, but for people who aren't getting married.
The article says that they "agreed" to share everything. They should have taken a bit of time to put that into writing to avoid future problems.
It shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone - people may say one thing while the relationship is going well, then change their minds after things fill apart. - bdbr, on 06/27/2009, -1/+6People need to stop with the "lifestyle they're accustomed to" argument. It costs much more for two people to live separately than for them to live together. The only way both parties can continue to live the lifestyle they're accustomed to is if they make considerably more than they need. Otherwise, it just means one of them suffers.
I got hit the other way - she got to live the lifestyle to which she was accustomed, and I was left with just a TV and a mattress and $80/month after the bills were paid. What happened to you wasn't fair, but what happened to me wasn't either. - cecirdr, on 06/27/2009, -0/+5Marriage and domestic partnerships have indeed been reduced to business type contracts. And at the moment society at large is also trying to figure out if businesses are responsible to the environments/locales they inhabit and the personnel they employ. We are all trying to decide if those in power and with money morally owe anything back to this world when they create rules that ensure their success at the expense of others who helped them out. Ergo...implied contract (which is a precedent already rolled up in the situation of marriage). Without the formalization of marriage, domestic partnerships have nothing to go on except contract law. It sucks, but it is reality.
I tell any young woman now who is considering marriage or a domestic partnership (guys too if they are similarly naive) to refuse to give up their careers to be the trailing spouse. Do not move for your spouse more than once and demand the move be to an area that also has a job market for you.
You may think that you wouldn't want a share of the money. But I've seen (and experienced) people change that tune when they realize that their employable skills are so rusty that they can't get a job. Especially if they're too poor to go back to school, and have no family to help them out either (like my situation). So it's instant homelessness unless you expect some sort of moral sense of fair play from your ex.
Instant homelessness and letting people with the will and the intellect to do more but instead sit fallow and unemployed is in the long term, very bad for society as a whole.
There is an important distinction I need to make between marriage and working for a business (as you make in your post) When a company employs you, they pay you a salary. You should save and invest it to tide you through if you get fired. For people like myself, I drew no salary for those 12 years. Plus any retirement money set aside was through my partner. That is an utterly different situation than what you are saying in your post...apples and oranges. - JoeMondo, on 06/27/2009, -1/+5If they were married, I'd agree.
But in this case they were not married. - tgjerusalem, on 06/27/2009, -0/+4It's a lot more complicated than just 'you're not married, just break up.'
If you're young, childless, and poor, it might be that easy. But if you've been together for any length of time, how do you split that up? Who gets the house? The joint checking account? The kids? Will child support be paid?
If you've given each other power of attorney, or gotten a health insurance plan together, or started a business together, or signed a civil union contract, how is that dissolved? And what if you signed the contract in one state, and break up in another one that doesn't recognize that contract? - JoeMondo, on 06/27/2009, -1/+5People ought to THINK about that before marrying.
If you form a partnership including shared resources and responsibilities, and the you end your partnership, the division of shared assets is going to have to be decided on.
If you don't want to make a commitment with an expectation of shared assets, why get married? - draculthemad, on 06/27/2009, -3/+7It depends.
This would fall under the rules for oral contracts.
Depending on jurisdiction, it may or may not be enforceable. - Taiyoryu, on 06/27/2009, -0/+3That's why either marriage licenses become marriage certificates, with no restrictions to people getting married, or take the government out of what has traditionally been a private contract.
- inactive, on 06/27/2009, -0/+3You can make a commitment without signing a license with the state.
Marriage is a institution created by religious fever, nothing more.
You can have your own contract made up with your lover without getting married. - CanIGetAWitness, on 06/27/2009, -1/+4Please! Won't somebody think of the children!
oh wait. - JoeMondo, on 06/27/2009, -0/+3True, you can.
But if you want to go the state route, expect to put your assets at risk. - wh3873, on 06/27/2009, -1/+4Oral contract for oral contact
- JuanBSU, on 06/27/2009, -0/+3Did you say you want reported? Oh, ok, thought so.
- facsimilesmiles, on 06/27/2009, -0/+3I agree. I've been with my partner just over two years, and already we've become so dependent on one another that a breakup would be devastating emotionally and financially. Marriage is not the only way to have a domestic relationship, and palimony is supposed to reflect that - whether they are gay or straight, they became mutually dependent. I don't know if I'd be able to sue someone I had spent such a long time with, but that's her decision regardless of whether they were "actually" married.
- JuanBSU, on 06/27/2009, -0/+3You must have put a lot of thought into that one.
- cecirdr, on 06/27/2009, -0/+3That indeed does suck. And it reeks as much as what happened to me.
I do not in any way think though that people need to be kept in the lifestyle they're accustomed to. I did not intend for my original comment to sound like I was saying that. What I'm saying is that if one partner gives up a career to be trailing spouse and can no longer support her/himself, then I think they are entitled to enough support for the time it would take for them to build up their skills again to an employable level at the same level they were achieving *prior* to the marriage. (this is assuming that abandoning partner is earning enough to do this...otherwise prorate things accordingly)
I do not think anyone needs to just sit on their ass and get taken care of. It is bad for everyone to allow people who were productive members of society and are still capable of being productive to get tossed aside with no rungs on a ladder to pull themselves out of a predicament. That goes for people like you too. Institutionalized stupidity that allows one partner to have to pay so much support that they are destitute themselves is also ridiculous.
I wonder where the blink societal common sense has gone? Perhaps we never had it....sigh. I feel for you...as much as I'm bitter about what happened to me. - jasoninoakland, on 06/27/2009, -0/+3Exactly. Unofficial gay marriage = none of the benefits and all of the drawbacks of heterosexual marriage. No wonder those selfish evangelical ***** want to keep it that way.
- DangQuesadilla, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2If Martina just gives her a million dollars (easy for Martina) then Toni will be fine. Why does Toni have to ask for so much? Ridiculous.
- tgjerusalem, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2If you own joint property together, you've given each other power of attorney, you share health plans, have legally and financially associated yourselves by non-marriage means including possible civil union contracts, breaking up can involve a lot of legal paperwork.
Who gets the house? Who gets the kids? Will child support be paid? How do you dissolve a civil union contract? What if you signed the contract in another state, and due to the current failure of states to respect the full faith and credit clause as it applies to our unions, the state you're currently living in doesn't recognize that contract? - cecirdr, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2I was responsible for all of our moves. I found new apartments or houses, arranged for builders, hired movers, culled our stuff etc. I did the fix -it work in our homes (painting, added cabinetry, redid a kitchen...tiled the counters.. replaced sinks, moulding, flooring. etc). I didn't hire that work out. I *did* it. We'd hardly got completely set up in a new home before we had to move again. My job was to make things so that all she had to focus on was her career. I also handled her travel receipts and filed for reimbursements until her company changed the system in the last couple of years. I also set up itineraries, flights, and hotels.
When we started RVing I had to find new campgrounds with the electrical requirements and networking required for a coroporate spouse...start up utilities, planned our routes (and that included planning for all overnight stops along the way that could accommodate a 40 foot triple slide rig, and scoping out bridge clearances). As soon as we sat still for a month, she began scoping out new places she wanted to go. So I had to plan, how we'd cut the ties in our present spot and get set up in the new....along with the typical admin assistant type work I did for free. (Now, it should have been a sign when all of a sudden she stopped wanting me to do the admin assistant work, but she told me that her company had people internally that now had to do it in order to get reimbursement)
So while people may want to think I was sitting around doing nothing, I most certainly was not. I was working...I just wasn't paid.
And for what it's worth...I had planned my future. It was supposed to be with her. Helping her succeed was supposed to be helping me succeed. That's why marriage encompasses something called an implied contract. - unbenamtl, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2I think it's still going to be "rights to marry same sex partner" movement until America gets unretarded. Divorce is a byproduct.
- JoeMondo, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2The nice thing about a marriage is that it formalizes the agreement.
People say all sorts of *****, and people construe each other to *mean* all sorts of other *****.
But when you agree to it in a legal contract, there's no disputing your intent. - cornfeed, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2Back in 1976 Lee Marvin was the first to be required by the court to pay. Martina Navratilova will be required to pay also.
- shredswithpiks, on 06/27/2009, -3/+5I'm gonna disagree with you (and the law, if it agrees with you) on this part:
"you should be entitled (at a minimum) to be left at the same level of lifestyle you were able to create for yourself before the relationship and enough money to retrain yourself to maintain that level of lifestyle on your own thereafter."
If you're going to compare marriage or a domestic partnership to a business/employment agreement, then I have no idea where you're coming from. If you were working an upper middle class job, and your company decides they don't want you around anymore and fires you, you're not entitled to have them help you get back to any standard of living whatsoever. They just let you know you don't work there anymore and that's that, even though you may have been instrumental to the business success while you worked there.
What happened to you sucks, and your partner was a douche for dropping you like that, but I don't think she really owes you anything. My opinion stands for straight marriages, too. If my wife was making 150k a year and left me I wouldn't go after any of it, even if I was jobless.
But that's just me. - Akairenn, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2Stop! You're making too much sense!
- JoeMondo, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2That's pretty dumb of them then.
Not everyone is so foolish. - cecirdr, on 06/28/2009, -0/+2Amen Truthkid. That is exactly what I tell the college kids I see now that have a similar service mindset to myself. I modeled myself after my mother who was a housewife and did live to serve her husband who was a farmer. (1940s-70s workforce) They operated as a partnership in one venture...his. But those times were so different to today's world. Growing up in rural MS and having only that as a role model in my cloistered existence led to some whopping bad decisions on my part.
What I experienced was a personal hurricane Katrina...or the all eggs in one basket that got overturned metaphor. So I try to use myself as a living example to anyone who is interested enough to read or hear the story.
There is no way I was blameless in the dissolution of my relationship. I can now totally understand that I had become a "not very interesting person" compared to what I had been when we first met (and I still worked in science). I also know how compelling the executive world was for my ex. I had thought all she wanted to be was an awesome sys admin. But it never hit me until I picked up her custom ping golf clubs (so she could go golfing with the upper crust in her company and their customers at Pebble beach) that she had designs for much more. That isn't a world I wanted to inhabit. It was too volatile for me. The relationship was destined to die.
So...20/20 hindsight and all that jazz... But you'd be amazed how many of the poorer rural folks in states like MS still have similar service mindset that I had to learn the hard way to set aside. It's scary and I'm doing whatever I can to point them a different direction. - Suricou, on 06/27/2009, -0/+2Those who marry tend to be deeply in love. They are *not* thinking. They are not capable of entertaining the possibility that their relationship could ever end.
- inactive, on 06/27/2009, -0/+1I disagree wholeheartedly (well, maybe not with 50-50 being crap). Marriage should be ENTIRELY within a cold, objective, irreligious legal framework. It should be nothing more than two consenting adults signing a legal contract. You can throw all the ceremony on top of it that you want, but at its core, that's what it should be.
- TruthKid, on 06/28/2009, -0/+1I wasn't implying you sat around and enjoyed the good life, however it's clear you neglected yourself by focusing completely on your partner. If your entire life revolves around someone else, then you're being naive and foolish, and the lesson was learned the hard way. Sure love implies a level of trust that puts someone in a vulnerable position, but if you have no level of fault redundancy in place that isn't centered on your partner then you were just asking to be a worse case scenario. I make enough money to support my wife and daughter, and it's a guaranteed job as long as I stay in the military, but my wife isn't going to simply stay home and focus on upkeep and maintaining our home, that's both our responsibilities. What was your plan if your ex lost her job? Burn through savings while you worked on building back up a career? From a moral standpoint, she was a horrible person for royally screwing you over, and if karma exists she deserves to get a healthy dose of payback in this lifetime. But legally, you spent 12 years investing your time into everything that revolved around her and your investment crashed.
- mksmothers, on 06/29/2009, -0/+1Yeah, Perez, there's still room in Lukas Smith's!
- undervalued, on 06/28/2009, -0/+1It is actually exactly that way in many countries.
- thizzlebot, on 06/27/2009, -0/+1Maybe they just really want to give away half of their *****.
- inactive, on 06/27/2009, -4/+5dont tell me in the future there will be "Equality of divorce without marriage" movement?
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