In the next couple of weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on same-sex marriage bans in Georgia and a dozen other states. The decision will also have implications for gay couples who want to end their marriages. Georgia’s same-sex marriage ban, passed by voters in 2004, explicitly forbids couples from all the benefits of a state-recognized marriage...including divorce.

According to Section B of the amendment, “the courts of this state shall have no jurisdiction to grant a divorce or separate maintenance with respect to any such relationship or otherwise to consider or rule on any of the parties' respective rights arising as a result of or in connection with such relationship.”

“So, as a practical matter, it is more or less impossible for a same-sex couple who had been married elsewhere and who then moved to Georgia or perhaps moved back to Georgia, to obtain a divorce,” says UGA associate law professor Hillel Levin.

One option is for couples to establish residency in a state that recognizes gay marriage and get a divorce there. But that can be difficult, and expensive. Atlanta lawyer Jeffery Cleghorn, who represents several same-sex couples, recently told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that many are living in “marriage purgatory”, unable to legally separate from their spouse.

A Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage would allow these couples to move out of purgatory and end their unions in Georgia. “I do not expect that it will take a long time or that it will be complicated, but it is possible when the Supreme Court issues its opinion that it will just take some time for in order for these things to work themselves out through the courts,” Levin says.

Tags: same-sex marriage ruling, same-sex marriage