If Tiger Woods Can Divorce in Florida, Why Can't I?

In case you missed the news — all over the media yesterday — Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren's divorce is final. That would hardly be news on an LGBT blog, except that it should remind us of the unfair burdens same-sex couples face not only when they want to marry, but also when they want to divorce.

Just last week, in fact, the California State Senate followed the Assembly in passing a bill so that couples who have both a civil marriage and a domestic partnership can (should it come to this) end them both simultaneously. Currently, couples who are both married and DP'd (partnered? domesticated?) must go through two separate proceedings to dissolve their relationship.

Aside from the few states that allow both marriages and domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, simply getting a divorce can also be a problem. A Texas appeals court in April heard arguments in a case challenging a Dallas judge’s decision to allow a gay couple married in Massachusetts to divorce in the Lone Star state. The Texas Attorney General's office argued that because the marriage wasn't valid in Texas, the couple should not be allowed to divorce there. In order to divorce in Massachusetts, the couple's lawyer countered, the men would have to re-establish residency there for at least six months.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has similarly denied a couple married in Massachusetts the right to divorce. New York, however, has allowed it, and neighboring New Jersey has allowed the divorce of a same-sex couple married in Canada. Are you with me so far? I'll spare you the comprehensive list.

Divorce is something no one, gay or straight, likes to consider. It may even seem particularly odious to same-sex couples — after all, we've been fighting for years for the right to marry. Getting a divorce can seem not only like a personal failure, but also as "letting down the team." To expect same-sex couples never to divorce, though, is as unrealistic as expecting all LGBT parents and their children to be perfect. We are no better — but no worse — than any others. (OK, there's some evidence that our children turn out better, but I've already written about how that can be misleading.)

No, I am not divorcing my spouse, whom I love dearly. The fact that we could only do so in a handful of states, however, is yet another example of the complications that arise when states do not recognize marriages performed legally in other states. It's the sort of thing the Constitution's "Full Faith and Credit Clause" seems designed to prevent. (I'll leave it to the international lawyers in the crowd to speculate on the implications for couples married or legally partnered in other countries who move to the U.S. and then wish to divorce. Tiger and Elin, I'll observe, married in Barbados but divorced in Florida.)

Whether you are glad to see Tiger and Elin go their separate ways or wish they could have worked things out (assuming he apologized for being such a schmuck), spare a moment to think of the same-sex couples in similar situations. They may be stuck in legal limbo, unable to move on with their lives, and with little help in sorting out issues of property, parenting, and pocketbooks. Breaking up sure is hard to do.

Photo credit: Carabou