Law Commons^™

The Right To Unmarry: A Proposal, Brian L. Frye, Maybell Romero

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

When I say I'm in love, you better believe I'm in love, L-U-V.

[April 2, 2020] BLF: This is a marriage proposal in the form of a law review article. In this Article, I observe that Maybell Romero and I are in love. I want to marry her, and I believe she wants to marry me. At least I'll find out pretty soon. But we cannot marry each other right now, because we are both currently married to other people.

Maybell and I want to end our existing marriages, and our respective spouses have even agreed to divorce. But the …

Regulating Nonmarriage, Albertina Antognini

Law Faculty Popular Media

In the Closing Thoughts column of UK Law Notes, Prof. Albertina Antognini discusses her research on the regulation of nonmarriage. Two years have elapsed since the Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to marry in the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges. Much ink has been spilled in the opinion’s aftermath by scholars who have in turn lauded it for its promotion of dignity and equality, criticized it for having a conservative vision of what marriage entails, or pored over its reasoning to better understand the future it has ushered in. Underlying the opinion, and the recent scholarly …

The Law Of Nonmarriage, Albertina Antognini

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The meaning of marriage, and how it regulates intimate relationships, has been at the forefront of recent scholarly and public debates. Yet despite the attention paid to marriage—especially in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges—a record number of people are not marrying. Legal scholarship has mostly neglected how the law regulates these nonmarital relationships. This Article begins to fill the gap. It does so by examining how courts distribute property at the end of a relationship that was nonmarital at some point. This inquiry provides a descriptive account to a poorly understood and largely under-theorized area of the law. …

Electing Fairness: A Check-The-Box-Style Regime For Same-Sex Couples' Tax Filing Status, Jennifer Bird-Pollan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In the wake of the United States Supreme Court's decision regarding the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor, tax lawyers and those interested in tax policy immediately wondered what consequences this change would have to the United States' federal tax laws. The Internal Revenue Service issued a Revenue Ruling explaining the position it took regarding the case, which answered many questions for taxpayers whose lives were affected by the decision. Because the IRS announced that it would recognize same-sex marriages based on the state of celebration of the marriage rather than the state of residence of …

No-Fault Death: Wedding Inheritance Rights To Family Values, Linda Kelly Hill

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Doma: An Unconstitutional Establishment Of Fundamentalist Christianity, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

This Article scrutinizes the constitutionality of the intent of the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA]. According to the text of the Act, DOMA's purposes are "to define and protect the institution of marriage," where marriage is defined to exclude same-sex partners. To be constitutionally valid under the Establishment Clause, this notion that heterosexual marriage requires "protection" from gay and lesbian persons must spring from a secular and not religious source. This Article posits that DOMA has crossed this forbidden line between the secular and the religious. DOMA, motivated and supported by fundamentalist Christian ideology, and lacking any genuine secular goals …

Doma: An Unconstitutional Establishment Of Fundamentalist Christianity, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article scrutinizes the constitutionality of the intent of the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA]. According to the text of the Act, DOMA's purposes are "to define and protect the institution of marriage," where marriage is defined to exclude same-sex partners. To be constitutionally valid under the Establishment Clause, this notion that heterosexual marriage requires "protection" from gay and lesbian persons must spring from a secular and not religious source. This Article posits that DOMA has crossed this forbidden line between the secular and the religious. DOMA, motivated and supported by fundamentalist Christian ideology, and lacking any genuine secular goals …

Family Protection Under Kentucky's Inheritance Laws: Is The Family Really Protected?, Carolyn S. Bratt

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Courts and legislatures always have granted widows some protection from the economic hardships that their husbands' deaths cause. At the earliest common law, a surviving wife was entitled to dower in the form of a right to remain in her husband's home along with the other heirs after the husband's death. Today, the states have enacted a variety of statutory devices that provide protection for families who might otherwise experience financial hardship upon the death of a spouse or parent. The older types of statutory safeguards take the form of homestead and personal property exemptions. Typically, the probate homestead exemption …

Using Formulas To Separate Marital And Nonmarital Property: A Policy Oriented Approach To The Division Of Appreciated Property Upon Divorce, Louise Everett Graham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Over the past ten years every writer venturing to discuss domestic relations must have been tempted to emphasize the importance of his or her work by opening with mention of the growing number of divorce cases confronting the court system. Beyond its numerical impact upon the judicial process, however, divorce litigation provides an important opportunity for the study of property rights and the institutions from which those fights are derived. Divorce cases increasingly involve difficult and complex questions concerning the marital property rights of the marriage partners. The importance of marital property cases is broader than the individual rules that …

Incest Statutes And The Fundamental Right Of Marriage: Is Oedipus Free To Marry?, Carolyn S. Bratt

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court has found that the right to marry is a constitutionally protected right. That right is restricted, however, by state incest statutes which impede marriage between adults by making some choices of a marriage partner illegal. The constitutional validity of modern state incest statutes is difficult to analyze because of shifting definitions, reflexive fears, ambivalent attitudes, and underlying facile generalizations.

The mere word "incest" triggers strong feelings of revulsion in most people. Therefore, any a priori labeling of a marriage as incestuous tends to preclude objective thought about the permissibility of the particular form of the marriage …

Kentucky Law Survey: Domestic Relations, Louise Everett Graham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In the decade since Kentucky's adoption of the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, the state's courts have faced the task of interpreting it in domestic relations litigation. This past year was no exception. A number of problems before Kentucky courts were recurrent issues. For example, the divisibility of educational degrees acquired by one spouse again required court assessment. Similarly, issues surrounding both maintenance and child support reappeared. These recurrent issues, along with new issues requiring court solution, heavily burdened trial and appellate courts. This Survey will discuss court resolutions of significant problems in the areas of marital property, maintenance and …

Seduction--Promise To Marry--Refusal Of Parental Consent, John D. Miller

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Domestic Relations--Capacity To Marry, James T. Youngblood

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Domestic Relations-Recent Kentucky Developments, 1950-1955, Frederick W. Whiteside Jr.

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Child Marriages" In Kentucky, John R. Gillespie

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Marriage Below The Statutory Age--Effect Of Cohabitation After Arriving At The Age, Town Hall

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.