TRENTON, N.J. (AP) | Gay marriages performed outside New Jersey are recognized in the state for the purpose of divorce, according to a ruling Friday by a judge deciding whether a lesbian couple married in Canada can split.
State Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson said in an oral ruling that New Jersey, which doesn’t recognize gay marriages, has a long history of recognizing marriages that are valid where they were performed.
“To grant the divorce here is not against public policy,” Judge Jacobson said. “It’s consistent with the strong marriage recognition principles that have been practiced since the 1800s.”
Judge Jacobson’s decision clears the way for La Kia and Kinyati Hammond to be divorced after a hearing March 2, and for La Kia Hammond to return to Canada to marry another woman.
Judge Jacobson said her ruling does not mean that the state has to recognize same-sex marriages for other purposes.
But her decision does overrule, in part, a state attorney general’s order that declared New Jersey wouldn’t fully recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere. Instead, they are considered to be joined in civil unions, which extend the benefits of marriage - but not the name - to gay couples.
Gay couples can legally marry in Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well as Canada and a handful of other countries.
States that don’t recognize gay marriage have begun grappling with how to deal with dissolving unions performed elsewhere. The state Supreme Court in Rhode Island and judges in Oklahoma and Texas have denied divorces. With Friday’s decision, New Jersey joins New York as states where they have been allowed.
“This suggests that will be happening more often in the future,” said Bill Duncan, director of the Marriage Law Foundation, a Lehi, Utah, group that opposes gay marriage.
Stephen Hyland, the lawyer who represented La Kia Hammond as a cooperating attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said this is a signal that the state should simply recognize gay marriages granted in Canada and elsewhere.
Gay-rights activists are pushing the Legislature to become the first in the nation to redefine marriage to include gay couples. In other states that recognize gay marriages, it’s been the result of court rulings.
Lee Moore, a spokesman for Attorney General Anne Milgram, said she had not yet decided whether to appeal Friday’s decision to a higher state court.
La Kia and Kinyati Hammond had been a couple for years and were raising La Kia Hammond’s daughter, 14, and two younger children before they were married in British Columbia in March 2004. The couple eventually settled in North East, Md.
In 2005, La Kia Hammond was found to have a terminal form of muscular dystrophy. She said doctors gave her two years to live. The next year, she left Kinyati Hammond and eventually moved with her daughter to New Jersey.
The 33-year-old former financial analyst, who lives in Ewing, is now in a relationship with another woman, Shanele Gooch, and wants to be able to marry her in Canada before she dies.
The state attorney general’s office had argued that she should be granted a dissolution of a civil union, instead of a divorce.
But La Kia Hammond said without a valid divorce, Canadian authorities might not allow her to remarry - an argument that Judge Jacobson said was compelling.
Kinyati Hammond, of New Castle, Del., did not respond to the divorce legal filings. A current phone number for her could not be found Friday.
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