Boston Divorce Lawyer – Boston Divorce & Family Law Attorney Blog

In a new book, Survived by Love, Jay Kent-Ferraro, a psychologist by training, talks about his marriage, how he cheated, got divorced and fell back in love with his wife.

I’m very much encouraged by these types of stories.  In my practice, I see couples come to me when their lives are falling apart.  I see my role as helping them rebuild from the rubbles of their failed marriage to build a new life.  Many people demonize divorce attorneys.  They think we create divorce and promote it.  In reality, couples come to us only after they’ve decided to divorce.  We did not cause the divorce itself.  Still, the stereotype persists.  Every once in a while though, I get calls from people who are really ready to divorce.  I’ll speak with them and they’ll reconsider.  Maybe they haven’t tried marriage counseling.  I’ll tell them to go try it.  Maybe they  haven’t taken a real deep look at themselves and their spouse to understand the problems and difficulties and try to fix them.  I ask them to be introspective.

When potential clients don’t call me back after I’ve had the talk with them, I like to think that maybe they decided that their marriage was worth the work.  It was worth a second chance.  I’ve also had clients who remarried their ex-spouse and I’ve had clients who stayed with their ex-spouse, though never got remarried to them.  It’s very encouraging.

Marriage isn’t forever.  Neither, apparently, is divorce.

I’ve written about the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) here before.  My beliefs are clear on what I believe to be a law that institutionalizes discrimination in our federal government.  In addition, it is a law that in essence defines marriage and takes that right away from the states – a right that has traditionally been reserved to the individual states.

The Obama administration has announced that it will no longer defend DOMA in court, where it is being challenged in federal court in several states.  This means that the Justice Department will no longer argue that the law is constitutional.  However, the law is still federal law and cannot be overturned simply because this administration refuses to defend it.  Therefore, it is still on the books as law until it is either ruled unconstitutional by the courts or it is repealed by the Congress.

But this is a step in the right direction.  It is the first step in ending this discriminatory law in the country that prides itself on freedom and tolerance.  I believe that this is going to be the Loving v. Virginia of our generation.  For those that are not lawyers, Loving v. Virginia is the Supreme Court case that allowed people of mix race to marry in this country.  In that decision, the Supreme Court wrote:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

I believe that you can substitute the words race for sexual orientation and have it be as applicable and as powerful as its original meaning.

In 2007, Mildred Loving, the named party in the seminal Supreme Court case above, said the following:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

* courtesy of the New York Times

I’ve been posting a lot here recently about marriage despite this being a blog about divorce.  But obviously divorce and marriage is related.  As a divorce attorney, I don’t celebrate when my clients get a divorce.  My job is a necessary evil.  Divorce happens and it is the role of the divorce attorney to help lay a foundation out of the financial and emotional ruins of a divorce.

Therefore, I often ask myself the most basic question in my practice – what does being married mean or rather, what should it mean.

The bill did not pass.

Last week, voters in Maine struck down a law voted on by their legislature and signed into law by their governor, granting same-sex couples equal rights under the law.  This is very disappointing and as I’ve said before, perhaps the rights of the minority should not be placed in the hands of the majority.  If this was the case, we would still have segregation of schools, no voting rights for blacks and women and we’d still prohibit interracial marriages.

I came across a paper by Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips, “Gay Rights in the States: Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness,” published recently in the American Political Science Review.  Here is a chart from that paper illustrating the support for same-sex marriage by varying age groups (click to enlarge):

What this tells us is that in 15-20 years, when the more tolerant 18-29 yr olds become the average age group, same-sex couples will have equality.  This gives me hope but it sure is a long time to wait.