Category: Marriage

Banning Child Marriage

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

Florida is stopping an embarrassing and ongoing family law problem: legal child marriages. There are more than 200,000 children married in the United States. Last week, a bill to ban the practice passed both houses of the Florida legislature, and has been converted into an act for the Governor to sign.

Florida’s Efforts to Ban Child Marriage

According to the Miami Herald, Florida is poised to put the country’s strictest ban on child marriage into law after a bill — with some narrow exceptions for 17-year-olds — was passed by state legislators Friday.

It is incredible to think that the marriage of children is technically legal in Florida.

Children aged 16- and 17-year-olds can marry with their parents’ consent, and even younger kids if there is a pregnancy.

But Senate Bill 140, which was passed by the House nearly unanimously, eliminates the pregnancy requirement and limits any marriage of minors to 17 years of age and only if they satisfy a series of requirements added by the Senate earlier in the week.

A bill to ban child marriages had been proposed for multiple years in the Legislature to close the loophole allowing minors to marry.

Florida Child Marriages

I’ve written about marriage and divorce before. Many people would be embarrassed to know that Florida actually allows child marriages. Previous efforts always failed, but this year was different.

Our statutes currently say that if anyone seeking a marriage license is under the age of 18, all that’s required is the written consent of the parents.

Even written consent isn’t required if the parent is deceased, or the child was previously married. The problem of child marriages is very concerning:

Between 70% and 80% of marriages involving individuals under age 18 end in divorce and getting married and later divorcing can more than double the likelihood of poverty.

Children are trapped, because they face many obstacles when they try to resist or escape marriages that adults forced into marriage don’t.

Unless a child is legally emancipated – given the rights of an adult – a child has very limited rights, leaving children trapped in a marriage with an adult.

This new Florida bill, if signed by the Governor, will finally end the status quo.

Sherry Johnson: Victim Turned Advocate

Lawmakers credited this year’s passage to six years of advocacy from Sherry Johnson, a child marriage victim who was raped, became pregnant, and was married to one of the men who assaulted her by age 11.

Johnson, who went on to have five more children in that marriage, said a ban on child marriage would have altered her future, even if it would not have prevented her abuse.

After she watched the House vote to send the legislation to the governor, advocate Sherry Johnson thanked bill sponsors Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, center, and Rep. Jeanette Nuñez, R-Miami, outside the chamber doors.

Johnson said she was satisfied with the compromise, though she plans to advocate for similar legislation across the country — and possibly abroad.

My mission is for the world, for the children all over the world. It’s not just Florida. … It’s for the children everywhere.

The Miami Herald article is here.

 

Religious Marriage & Divorce

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

A recent survey found that 6 in 10 women who had Muslim religious weddings are not in legal marriages, depriving them of spousal rights. Many people have religious weddings, and don’t get a marriage license. What is the importance of the marriage license, and is the religious ceremony enough?

According to the London Guardian, nearly all married Muslim women have had a nikah, a religious marriage ceremony.

However, about 61% had not gone through a separate civil ceremony which would make the marriage legal.

If you have a religious marriage only, and the marriage breaks down, you may be unable to go to family court to divide marital assets, such as the family home and your spouse’s pension.

This trend of having a religious ceremony, but no civil marriage license, is becoming a problem as more people think having religious marriage ceremony is enough.

Florida Marriage Law

I’ve written about marriage validity, and the intersection between religious marriage and civil marriage before. First off, in order to be validly married in Florida, you need a license from the government.

No, you don’t get your marriage license from the DMV, but from the Clerk of the Court.

Getting a marriage license may seem like a trivial obligation, but if you want your religious marriage recognized in court, you must get a marriage license.

There is a fee for getting a marriage license, and that fee is reduced for attending pre-marital counseling. The license is valid for 60 days. The officiant at the ceremony must certify that the marriage was solemnized.

The certified marriage license must be returned to the clerk or an issuing judge within 10 days, and the clerk or judge is required to keep a correct record of certified marriage licenses.

Florida courts have repeatedly warned people that they cannot depart from the requirement of the Florida Statutes to have a license, otherwise the courts would be creating common-law marriages, which are not recognized here.

If you only have the religious marriage, but do not file for a marriage license, your marriage will not likely be recognized, and you cannot divorce, and cannot make claims for equitable distribution, or ask a court for alimony.

That can be a devastating surprise for many people.

Religious Only Marriages

Every religion has there own method of marrying. For Catholics, the celebration normally takes place within a Mass. In Judaism, there’s a marriage contract, a marriage canopy, and the breaking of a glass. In the Islamic nikah, there is a reading from the Qur’an, and the exchange of vows in front of witnesses.

Religious marriage without a license, is not only a major problem, but a growing problem.

Religious marriages are also easier to terminate than legally registered marriages, so marriage has become easy and divorce has become easy. It’s a disturbing trend.

Generally in Florida, regularly ordained ministers of the gospel or elders in communion with some church, or other ordained clergy, and all judicial officers, clerks of the circuit courts, and notaries public may solemnize the rights of matrimonial contract, under the law.

The Guardian article is here.

 

Ban Child Marriages

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

A pressing family law problem is the more than 200,000 children married in the United States. No, that’s not a statistic from frontier life in the 1800s, that covers marriages over the past 15-years. What is the status of child marriages?

According to the Independent there is a surprising number of child marriages: three 10-year-old girls and an 11-year-old boy were among the youngest to wed on the U.S., under legal loopholes which allow minors to marry in certain circumstances.

The minimum age for marriage across most of the US is 18, but every state has exemptions – such as parental consent or pregnancy – which allow younger children to tie the knot.

In May, the high-profile Republican governor for New Jersey declined to sign into law a bill that would have made New Jersey the first to ban child marriages without exception. Chris Christie claimed it would conflict with religious customs.

At least 207,468 minors married in the US between 2000 and 2015. The true figure is likely to be much higher because 10 states provided no or incomplete statistics.

Florida Child Marriages

I’ve written about marriage and divorce before. Many people would be embarrassed to know that Florida actually allows child marriages.

Our statutes say that if anyone seeking a marriage license is under the age of 18, all that’s required is the written consent of the parents. Even written consent isn’t required if the parent is deceased, or the child was previously married.

Currently, there is a Florida Senate bill which would prohibit a judge or clerk from issuing a marriage license to any person under the age of 18.

The current exceptions that permit a minor to marry, such as parental consent, the fact that a couple already has a child, or a physician’s written verification of a pregnancy, would be repealed. This bill would end child marriages in Florida.

The Scourge of Child Marriages

The problem of child marriages is concerning.

Between 70% and 80% of marriages involving individuals under age 18 end in divorce, and getting married and later divorcing can more than double the likelihood of poverty.

Children are trapped, because they face many obstacles when they try to resist or escape marriages that adults forced into marriage don’t.

Unless a child is legally emancipated – given the rights of an adult – a child has very limited rights, leaving children trapped in a marriage with an adult.

Last month New York banned children under 17 from marrying. Previously minors as young as 14 were allowed to in New York.

The Independent article is here.

 

Mixed Marriages

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court case that overturned anti-miscegenation laws nationwide. In the Loving case, a black woman and a white man had been sentenced to a year in a Virginia prison for marrying each other. Is the anniversary permitting mixed marriages still relevant?

As the New York Times reports on a similar couple in California, for their first date, in 1949, Leon Watson and Rosina Rodriquez headed to the movie theater. But each entered separately. First went Ms. Rodriquez, a fair-skinned woman. Mr. Watson, who is black, waited several minutes before going in and sitting next to her.

When they married in Oakland in 1950, mixed-race marriage had just become legal in California, the result of a lawsuit that reached the State Supreme Court. They are among the oldest living interracial couples legally married in the United States. It would be nearly two decades before all couples like them across the country were allowed to marry.

Florida Law

Although it seems strange these days, Florida outlawed marriages between a couple in which one of the couple is white and the other is black. While those laws are all unconstitutional and of no force, at the time, Florida was not the only southern state to do so.

Loving v. Virginia

In 1958, after receiving a marriage license in Washington, D.C., the Lovings returned home to Central Point, Va., where weeks later, police burst into their bedroom late one night to arrest them. That ultimately led to a legal battle against Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court almost a decade later.

Same Sex Marriage

Why is Loving still relevant? In the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving, Chief Justice Earl Warren emphasized the central importance of the freedom to marry. He also spoke on the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement that race not be the basis for excluding any couple from that freedom.

Fast-forward to 2013 when, in United States v. Windsor, the U.S. Supreme Court took the same approach in Loving, when it upheld New York’s authority to recognize same-sex marriage.

The Windsor Court ruled that, once married under New York law, a couple could not be denied federal benefits just because the two people in that marriage shared a gender identity.

Many connections have been drawn between same-sex marriage cases, and Loving, the 1967 ruling that legalized interracial marriage nationwide. For instance, both the mixed-marriage and same-sex marriage cases spoke of marriage as a “fundamental right.”

Also, in both cases people who argued against mixed-race and same-sex marriage raised the concerns about whether or not children were disadvantaged or harmed, and if the state or the country had a duty to protect children from that potential harm. Although it seems like an odd argument today, many opposed to same-sex marriages argued whether or not children who grow up with same-sex parents will be psychologically, emotionally, or socially harmed.

The New York Times article is here.

 

Avoiding Divorce: The Perfect Age to Marry

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By The Law Offices of Ronald H. Kauffman of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Marriage on Tuesday, July 28, 2015.

This post asks if there is a right time to marry. Is it true that if you get married too early or too late, the chances are you’ll end up in divorce court? One professor says the late 20s and early 30s are perfect.

I’ve written about the right time to divorce. But is there a right time to marry? Relying on data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth, a professor from Utah states that the age of marriage now has a U-shaped relationship to divorce risk.

The odds of divorce decline as you age from your teenage years through your late twenties and early thirties. Then, the chances of divorce go up again as you move into your late thirties and early forties.

This is a marked departure from the way people used to think of it, when the relationship was relatively linear: the older you are when you first marry, the lower the odds of divorce.

The new study suggests that people should get married between the ages of 28 and 32 if they don’t want to get divorced, at least in the first five years.

These are just statistics, so do not accept these figures as your own wedding or engagement announcement gets sent out. There are many reasons why starting a marriage in your late 20s or early 30s makes sense:

people are old enough to understand if they really get along with someone or are just blinded by hormones. They’ve already made significant life choices and taken on some responsibilities. And they may be just financially solvent enough to be able to contemplate supporting someone should the need arise.

Others sociologists say the perfect age to get married if you don’t want to get divorced is 45 to 49, which, is why people shouldn’t make life decisions based on statistical analyses on the Internet.

The new study can be found here.

Gay Marriage after DOMA

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On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Marriage on Monday, July 1, 2013.

In case you didn’t hear the news, the Supreme Court last week ruled that married same-sex couples were entitled to the same federal benefits as same-sex couples and, by declining to decide a case from California, effectively allowed same-sex marriages there.

The rulings leave in place laws banning same-sex marriage around the nation, and the court did not say there was a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

So, the effects are probably limited to couples married in the 12 states (and California) that recognize gay marriage. But the number of states recognizing gay marriage is likely to grow.

The majority opinion did something unusual, it stated that laws based on “animus” against gays and lesbians are unconstitutional:

DOMA seeks to injure the very class New York seeks to protect. By doing so it violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government. …The Constitution’s guarantee of equality “must at the very least mean that a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot” justify disparate treatment of that group. The Constitution’s guarantee of equality “must at the very least mean that a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot” justify disparate treatment of that group.

This is a different analysis when the Supreme Court strikes down discriminatory laws. Specifically, the Court did not recognize “homosexual relations” as a “fundamental right,” or homosexuals as a suspect class. If the Supreme Court had done that, the Windsor case would have been a “fifty-state solution”, mandating same-sex marriage in every state. But it didn’t.

In Windsor however, the Court used state marriage laws to identify an individual’s liberty interest that justifies subjecting a federal law to heightened scrutiny. This is not how the doctrine has been done in the past.

Because of the Court’s striking down DOMA this way, states are free to define marriage as they wish – subject to Equal Protection and Due Process clause restraints – and the fight over “gay marriage” will continue in the states for years, as other litigation winds its way back to the Court.

You can read more about the two gay marriage rulings in the New York Times here.

Sex, Marriage and Taxes in court

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On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Marriage on Thursday, May 23, 2013.

Alright, this post is not as exciting as the title suggests. But, in March our highest court did hear arguments in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case, and that case has an interesting twist which could impact other divorce cases.

Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were a lesbian couple in New York, and married in Toronto, Canada where it was legal. Two years later, Spyer died. While New York recognizes same-sex marriages, under DOMA the federal government can’t.

As a result, Windsor had to pay more than $363,000 in estate taxes. Had their marriage been treated the same as an opposite-sex marriage, she would not have had to pay any taxes. Windsor sued the government to get her money back.

A trial judge held part of DOMA violated the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment, and that Windsor should be repaid her taxes with interest. The court of appeals upheld the trial judge, and the government petitioned the Supreme Court to grant certiorari.

Then the train went off the tracks. President Obama ordered the Justice Department to stop defending DOMA in federal court. In response, Republicans in the House of Representatives ordered their own Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (known as BLAG) to defend the statute.

BLAG’s ability to argue the case is a problem. If the parties agree the statute is unconstitutional, how can someone come in and take over the case. Is that really a “case or controversy” giving jurisdiction? This can happen in other family law cases when grandparents, guardians ad litem, attorneys ad litem and government agencies get involved.

So, the three big issues before the U.S. Supreme Court are whether:

(1) DOMA violates the 5th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection as applied to a legally married same-sex person;

(2) Obama’s agreement that DOMA is unconstitutional deprives the U.S. Supreme Court of jurisdiction to decide this case; and

(3) BLAG can continue with the case after the Justice Department drops it.

You can follow the case here.

Is Your Marriage Valid If You Phoned-in Your Vows?

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On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Marriage on Wednesday, November 28, 2012.

In Florida, it is pretty easy to get married and divorce. You have to apply for a marriage license, which can be issued by any county court judge or the clerk of court, and then the marriage needs to be solemnized by any ordained clergy, judge, clerk of court, or notary public.

Of course, there are a few impediments to marriage. Impediments to marriage mean the marriage won’t be recognized in Florida, which can turn a lawsuit for a divorce into an annulment. The difference can be important if alimony is in dispute. Who wants to learn they aren’t entitled to alimony because their marriage was invalid?

The impediments to marriage fall into two major categories: the lack of consent or incapacity to consent. For example, the age of consent here is 18. So, with a few exceptions, minors generally can’t marry in Florida. Then there is the Bachelor Party wedding; a Las Vegas style marriage which gets annulled because someone was too drunk to consent.

However, if you are a busy bride on the go, or a groom out of town on business, can you appear for your wedding by phone? Can you email your vows to the priest or rabbi? Is the marriage valid? Florida law is unclear, but the Washington Post reported yesterday on a Maryland case in which validity of a marriage was called into question because the husband was in the Congo during his wedding.

Noel Tshiani wasn’t at his wedding – he listened by phone in another country to the ceremony in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to court records. After about 15 years, the Mrs. Tshiani filed for divorce. Her husband told the divorce judge that he didn’t know about the marriage. That was despite renewing their vows in church, obtaining a green card for his wife and having filed joint tax returns, according to last week’s ruling from the Court of Special Appeals. Soon, he’ll be just as divorced and responsible for alimony and child support, a Maryland court has ruled.

The court noted that the law doesn’t bar Maryland “from recognizing a ceremony where one party participates by proxy – or in the manner that occurred here – and the ceremony is valid in another jurisdiction.”