“Legal limbo” for couples married out of state

When the California Supreme Court outrageously upheld the discriminatory and unconstitutional Prop 8, they pointedly did NOT rule on the validity of marriages conducted out-of-state. The roughly 18,000 marriages conducted before the ban passed were still held to be valid, but justices felt that the other question was not put before them.

So moving forward that leaves many families on extremely uncertain ground.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Shannon Minter joined family law practitioners in issuing a memorandum arguing for the rights of these couples, and offering the legal grounds for guaranteeing them.

Until Prop 8 is overturned, one way or another, there’s going to remain a lot of uncertainty.