southern
indiana
I attended the two day Family Law Institute in Indianapolis in October. The two day conference covered the latest case and statutory updates in family law, but also provided a lot of information about same sex marriage in Indiana and elsewhere. The courts are clearly struggling about what to do with same sex marriages from other states when the parties move to Indiana and seek a divorce. In one trial court case, a couple married and then one party had a sex change. A divorce filing later ensued, but the trial court dismissed the case because the parties were now a same sex couple making the marriage void!
In a recent case, the Court of Appeals struggled with a lesbian couple who conceived a child through assisted reproduction techniques. The court stated in AC v. NJ,, 10/31/13
Our system of government entrusts the General Assembly, not the courts, to fashion a framework for deciding matters as tethered to social mores and sensibilities as this subject is. We feel the vacuum of such guidance even more acutely now than we did eight years ago, when King was decided. Indeed, what began as a trickle is rapidly becoming a torrent, and the number of children whose lives are impacted by rules that have yet to be written only increases with the passage of time. They, and we, would welcome a legislative roadmap to help navigate the novel legal landscape in which we have arrived.
http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/10311313ehf.pdf