About Me

Name: Hal Davis

Location: Plano, Texas, United States

View my complete profile

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later, but it still surprised me to learn this. According to the Dallas Voice blog, a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts in 2004 and adopted a child together. They moved to Texas and one has filed for divorce. The other one is taking the position that gay marriage is not permitted under Texas Law, therefore there can be no divorce in Texas, so let's divide stuff as though we were roommates.
http://www.dallasvoice.com/instant-tea/2009/12/16/austin-woman-contests-wifes-divorce-petition-by-arguing-that-their-marriage-is-illegal/

Of course, this is taking the opposite position of the two men married in Massachusetts, moved to Texas, filed for divorce here, and the trial court judge has ruled that it is unconstitutional for Texas to prevent folks married in another state from pursuing a divorce here. This case is still in the early phases, and it's certain that when this case is over somebody's going to appeal it, and it's in the appellate court system that you get rulings that amount to law.

I guess that in nearly every divorce it would be advantageous to one side or the other to be able to claim that the parties were never married in the first place. If the parties are married, everything they have is presumed to be community property, subject to a "just and right" division, and if you want to claim something isn't community property, the burden of proof is on you to show that you had it before the marriage, or you got it by gift or inheritance.

If there's no marriage, then there's no community property, and you divide stuff like roommates would, including discussions of who actually paid for something, whose name is on the title or receipt, and whether something was a gift to the other.

In this particular gay relationship, whether there's a marriage or not doesn't make much difference regarding the child they adopted. The court would still make the same decisions and on the same basis on parental rights, possession schedule, and child support whether there's a marriage or not. Adoptive parents are legal parents whether they were married or not, and whether they are gay or straight.

I just read an Ezine article by Virginia Keeley who quotes some Texas divorce statistics. Here's a link to the article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Youre-Not-Alone---A-Look-at-Recent-Divorce-Statistics&id=3138848
Let me know if this link doesn't work and I'll snip it out.

She says her numbers come from the Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics, and other independent studies.

According to the article, the average divorce rate in the United States in 2007 was 3.6 per 1000 persons. And, by the way, I believe that the 1000 includes infants, children, bachelors, and widows. So, on average, there would be about 856,000 divorces each year in the United States. But, if Collin County's population is 500,000, you'd expect to see something like 1,800 divorces a year in Collin County, or about 7.2 divorces filed each day that the courts are open. That seems a bit low to me, but feels like it's in the ballpark.

At any rate, her statistics state that of those marriages that end in divorce, first marriages last "an average of 8 to 11 years" and remarriages that end in divorce last an average of 7.4 years for men and 7.1 years for women. This is vaguely in line with a study I did about Texas marriages that end in divorce, mingling first and subsequent marriages, that showed that Texas marriages ending in divorce lasted a little over 7 years (the 7-year itch?).

What I found most interesting was this:
• If you have an annual income of over $50,000, your risk of divorce decreases by 30%.
• If you wait to marry until you're over 25, your risk of divorce decreases by 24%.
• If your parents are happily married, your risk of divorce decreases by 14%.
• If you have strong religious beliefs, your risk of divorce decreases by 14%.
• If you've attended college, your risk of divorce decreases by 13%.

I've never really seen good statistics on the odds of a marriage ending in divorce, but I'm thinking it's in the ballpark of 50%. So, if you start with 50% and apply the adjustments above, you appear to be able to drastically decrease your odds of being divorced, The problem is that if you satisfy all of the adjustments above, the odds of getting divorced are -95% (a negative probability is impossible).

I'm reminded of the quote from Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."