Mediating California Domestic Partnership Dissolutions

We believe that mediation offers significant freedom and value to gays and lesbians who are transitioning out of their relationships. This is because your experience differs substantially from the experience of divorce for mixed gender couples. This is partly a result of a shifting cultural and legal landscape. Applying legalistic considerations alone ignores huge differences in the underlying history and experience of same-sex couples. 

For instance, until very recently there were no legal and few cultural supports for those of you who same desired to make a life together. You lacked a framework that provided the type of assumptions that hetero couples enjoy, and there was more than just a lack of understanding and empathy - there was a hysteria, homophobia and much worse. "The law" was known to same-sex couples or gay or lesbian individuals as a basis for taking children away from mothers or for prosecuting men on account of sexual conduct.   

Hence, there was uncertainty over what would happen if the relationship ended or a suppressed outrage at the vulnerability of the weaker partner within the court system. A class of citizens was disenfranchised. All of this naturally generates a distrust of the courts, of lawyers, and of related professionals. 

Attributes unique to the same sex legal experience may include:

• Prior to ten years ago same sex couples were effectively excluded from the family court system. They had no rights as between themselves relating to property they accumulated during the relation beyond what might be established on the basis of civil contract law. It was common for title to property to be maintained in the name of one partner for tax or privacy reasons. Upon splitting up this dramatically undercuts the less economically empowered partner's rights to obtain their share. 

• There has been a limited awareness of how marital rules will play out. These new rules may be in contrast with how the partners have structured their financial lives, and may differ from private understandings and intentions. This creates a disconnect between the expectations held by the parties and the assumptions of the courts.

• The new rules may be adverse to one party alone, unlike more gender neutral rules that affect hetero spouses in divorce. The experience for the disempowered partner seems like an aspect of a broader social oppression.

• The personal loss that all people in relationship transition inevitably suffer is compounded by a sense of societal injustices when rules derived from traditional opposite sex couples are applied without a sensitivity to the distinct life experiences of same sex couples.

• Some same sex couples entered into domestic partnerships to share in insurance benefits or in order to gain social recognition for the validity of their relationship. In many ways lesbian and gay couples have lived outside the law for generations, and it is a shock to discover that unintended consequences and obligations now apply. An example is the high earning partner who now may be faced with an obligation to pay partner support when that was not fully considered when the parties became RDPs. Husbands and wives have generations of experience of the notion that if the relation dissolves an alimony obligation may arise - that simply has not been the same sex experience.

• Unlike the cultural programming for married couples, the understanding between gay or lesbian couples about monogamy is sometimes different (particularly where becoming parties become RDPs to gain access to health insurance or as something of a political act) than what is conventionally assumed. This leads to the lack of a common understanding between partners and creates challenges for dissolution proceedings, especially as it impacts the emotional dissolution.

• Complications arise where one partner is a parent with a biological connection to a child the parties raise together, and the other is not. Parental relations that were intended to be the same as if a child was the joint issue can become severely limited upon a breakup if there was no adoption. This outcome may be very different from what the parties promised and expected and deeply affects their attitude towards the proceedings and each other.  

It is just a fact that the gay and lesbian experience of partnership dissolution (and those who were married during the window) differs hugely from that of 'straight' couples. This makes Mediation and Co-Mediation a highly advantageous alternate framework for assisting you in these transitions, particularly because mediations allow for resolutions that don't depend upon the law of heterosexual unions.

Contact DFMS

760-323-7455