Welcome to the Hello Divorce Podcast. I'm your host, Erin Levine. I'm super excited to share with you my top insider tips for divorce, including actionable steps in bite-sized pieces to lowering the cost, conflict, and confusion surrounding your divorce so that you can confidently move on to that next awesome chapter. Today's topic, special considerations for gay and lesbian divorces. In 2016, the US Supreme Court affirmed marriage equality across the US. While same-sex couples can now finally get a license to marry, we spent so much time and energy advocating for gay and lesbian marriage that considerations around divorce took a backseat. If you are divorcing in California, and some other states for that matter, I want you to go through a few considerations that your lawyer or your Google search may not have thought up. In California, we don't recognize common law marriage. That means that if you and your partner live together in a relationship for 20 years but only recently married, the family law system recognizes your marriage as short term, with different property and support rights and responsibilities afforded to marriages of long duration.

There is an exception if you have a civil union, or a domestic partnership, or the equivalent, but I'm not talking that domestic partnership that many of us registered for a nurse city so that we could get something like a family gym membership. I'm talking about a state-sanctioned and registered domestic partnership. But what do you do if you find yourself getting divorced after let's say a 20-year relationship when you've only been married for a short time? Well, if you're the spouse who earned less or accumulated less property, and I want you to think not just real property but retirement benefits and financial accounts, then you are going to want to try and do what you can to negotiate outside of the legal system. Going to court won't help your plight. You also want to consider speaking with a lawyer about whether or not you have a property or support a legal claim for the period of time in which you were together but not married. But fair warning, in most states it's rare unless you had a cohabitation agreement or something of the like.

There is an exception if you have a civil union, or a domestic partnership, or the equivalent, but I'm not talking that domestic partnership that many of us registered for a nurse city so that we could get something like a family gym membership. I'm talking about a state-sanctioned and registered domestic partnership. But what do you do if you find yourself getting divorced after let's say a 20-year relationship when you've only been married for a short time? Well, if you're the spouse who earned less or accumulated less property, and I want you to think not just real property but retirement benefits and financial accounts, then you are going to want to try and do what you can to negotiate outside of the legal system. Going to court won't help your plight. You also want to consider speaking with a lawyer about whether or not you have a property or support a legal claim for the period of time in which you were together but not married. But fair warning, in most states it's rare unless you had a cohabitation agreement or something of the like.

Schedule a 15-minute strategy session from Hello Divorce's homepage or a legal coaching session to learn to learn more. Keep listening to this podcast for actionable tips to keep your divorce amicable and affordable, and of course to cover all your legal bases so you are ready for your fresh start.