Gay Couples Law Blog : Atlanta Same Sex Family Law and Estate Planning Commentary : Gideon Alper : Gay Law, Domestic Partnerships

Mexico City legalized gay marriage late last year, becoming the city in Latin America to do so.

Lots of gay couples near Canada already go there to get married. I expect same sex couples in southwestern states to head to Mexico for the same reason. But will their Mexico gay marriage be legally recognized when they come back?

It depends on where they live. If they're from one of the six jurisdictions that allow gay marriage--Iowa, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, D.C.--then their marriage from Mexico will be recognized. But if they're from one of those places, they probably aren't going to trek to Mexico to get married anyway.

The only other places that will recognize a gay marriage from Mexico City are California and New York, both of which passed laws last year to recognize same sex marriages from other jurisdictions.

New Yorkers live pretty far from Mexico, so I don't expect to see many of them head down to Mexico just to get married, especially when they live next door to three states that where they could do the same.

For Californians, on the other hand, Mexico City legalizing gay marriage means there's now a relatively easy way to get gay marriage rights. The combination of Mexico City's new gay marriage law and California's new recognition law means that all a gay couple in California has to do to get marriage rights is take a day trip to Mexico. Mexico City lets U.S. residents get married there as long as they bring the right paperwork.

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Folks who live in Maine might be thinking about getting married in Canada after their state voted down a law that would have allowed gay marriage. In fact, many U.S. gay residents go to Canada to take advantage of laws that have allowed gay marriage since 2005.

But they better hope they stay together. It's hard for same sex couples to get divorced after getting married in Canada.

While couples can easily go to Canada for a weekend and get married, the country has more strict requirements when its comes to divorce. The Canadian Divorce Act says that for a couple to get divorced in Canada, one person must have lived in the country for at least a year just before the divorce. Not surprisingly, people may not want to move to Canada for a year just so they can get divorced.

But staying home has its own problems. The reason a gay couple goes to Canada to get married in the first place is usually because their own state doesn't allow gay marriage. But if it doesn't allow gay marriage, it probably won't allow gay divorce either. So Maine residents who now go to Canada to get married, for example, won't be able to get divorced back in their home state.

Barbara Findlay, a family lawyer in Vancouver, summarized the situation in the latest issue of Lawyers Weekly:

So unless they happen to be very wealthy and have nothing better to do with their time than to hang out in Canada for a year, they really can’t get a divorce here. In other words, they are stuck in a divorce catch-22.

Couples married in Canada aren't completely out of luck because they can still go to one of the few states that allows gay marriage and divorce. But these states often have their own additional rules. Massachusetts, for example, also has a 1 year residency requirement similar to Canada's.

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