The Legal Quirks of Trans Marriage
Not the Man I Married
by Katherine Glover
Minnesota Law & Politics
August/September 2008
When a trans person marries a member of his or her new gender before transitioning, is there any reason the union shouldn’t be considered legal?
“Generally speaking, the validity of a marriage is measured at the time that the marriage is contracted,” says Phil Duran, a staff attorney with GLBT rights group OutFront Minnesota. “So if at the time of the marriage one person was legally male and one person was legally female, then short of an annulment, the only way you can terminate that is through death or divorce.”
Which adds an extra twist to the legal issues around same-sex marriage.
“If we were ever to get a divorce,” April says, “I could go to Texas and marry another woman, or I could stay here and marry a man.”
Tags: blog, GLBT, my journalism, print links, Law & Politics.
Posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 6:32 pm