Family Law After Prop 8: Now What?

A little update:  The WSJ Law Blog has a nice Q&A with a USC law professor on this very topic.

A lot of people are going to wonder that, especially those couples who got married in the last few months but have been told by a slim majority of California voters that their marriages aren't valid. And the people answering those very complicated questions are going to be family law attorneys. Chaos and limbo are the words on the L.A. Times' metaphorical lips.

Family law practitioner Deborah Wald, who runs a two-attorney shop and a blog, put up a post on Monday night that addressed the questions that would arise if Prop 8 passed.  Well, the ban on same-sex marriage passed, 52 percent to 48 percent, so unless the suit to argue that 8 was too sweeping a change to the Constitution to be permitted by initiative, those questions are suddenly very relevant.

Wald doesn't have a lot of answers yet, since these are untested waters:

 .. [F]or couples who married in California before Prop 8, there could be substantial complexity in figuring out your legal relationship in a post-Prop 8 world. In what senses are you still married? In what senses aren’t you?

She suggests resources for staying abreast of developments, and maps out a number of the issues that same-sex couples and their attorneys will need to wrestle with. Prop 8's proponents won the ballot with an expensive and slick campaign that opponents described as fearmongering.  Now, a lot of California families will have to deal with real fears, from whether they still have insurance coverage to how their rights as parents are(n't) legally protected.

Prop 8 will create novel questions for family law attorneys even as civil rights attorneys pursue the greater issue in the Supreme Court.

— Brian McDonough

Comments

[Troy Daniels]

Since this is a political question and those who oppose same sex marriage cannot show harm, how is it that groups, organizations and individuals that oppose Prop. 8 have standing?

[emilyscott]

Like others this is also damn interesting…who runs a two-attorney shop and a blog, put up a post on Monday night that addressed the questions that would arise if Prop 8 passed.

Best Attorney

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