TN court denies divorce under #Obergefell gay-marriage ruling, but also for good, routine reasons

"This is not actually unusual in family law." That's the most typical thing we say on this blog, and the main reason I started it. To give the public and journalists background whenever -- and ideally before -- the media blows up with some story that essentially says, "In a shocking and unprecedented development which must be caused by corruption, politics or ideology, a mother lost 'full custody'! / was barred from moving her baby across the country / an American citizen was forced to return her children to the foreign country where they were born and raised! / a soldier was forced to share his pension with his slutty ex! / a child was forced to spend time in the care of his father when she could instead be in quality day care! / a white woman was jailed for disobeying a court order! / an orphaned child was sent to his non-custodial father instead of the heirs whom the mother left custody to in her will!"

What this blog usually says in such cases is no, that's actually routine and what happened in this case was for reasons that we in the family law field have come to accept as normal. So if you don't like it, you should realize that the problem is not with one judge who is corrupt, or anti-female or anti-male, rather, this is just one of thousands of similar cases of widespread suffering and irrepressible conflict that our current system, and perhaps any system of widespread family breakup, imposes on men AND women! And children.

We've also been able to say when a court decision truly is a wrongheaded outlier, such as the one forcing skier Bode Miller's ex-girlfriend to move across the country to give birth. 

The case that's breaking the internet today is a little bit of both kinds:

If You Thought The Kentucky Clerk Was Stupid, Check Out This Tennessee Judge

By JOE PATRICE on abovethelaw.com, 9/2/15

The court opinion in the case includes two good and routine reasons to dismiss both parties' dueling divorce claims -- failure to prove the divorce grounds, and non-compliance with the court's procedural rules. Independently of the bad, creative, and publicity-attracting argument that the US Supreme Court has preempted any action on marriage by any other levels or branches of government. 

 If you read it to the end, it dismisses the divorce claims not only for for one bad reason, which is, as I had suspected when I first heard of this, a counterpart to the liberal judges who used to deny DV protective orders based on DOMA just to make DOMA look savage and harmful; a very good reason (failure to prove the divorce grounds), and a so-so but widely accepted reason (complete failure to comply with procedural requirements of local rules, such as filing financial statements).

 

It looks like the parties had normal relations the very night before the divorce complaint was filed and/or served. This cast doubt on the "irretrieveable breakdown" claim and also on the credibility of other claims in the complaint. And there were other problems with the parties' credibility. Quotes:

 "The Court is also compelled to comment upon its observations concerning the credibility and demeanor of thePlaintiff and Defendant. As noted when the Court announced its decision, this matter suffers from a bad case of excellent cross- examination. Perhaps the Court's observation as announced was less than delicate, but the fact that the parties were gutted like a fish during cross-examination is nonetheless accurate."

... "The only excuse for Plaintiff' s decision to be intimate with Defendant after she had executed her 'fear for her safety' verification page in support of the divorce and request for a TemporaryRestraining Order was 'I wanted to give him one more chance' to avoid the filing."

Tennessee often has cases denying divorces because "irrevocable breakdown" was not proven. Even in Virginia, where no-fault is a matter of six or twelve months of separation with intent to permanently separate, I've had that happen, rarely but always with very good reason. (In one such case, the couple later reconciled and the wife became a marriage therapist.) Divorce cases also get dismissed for procedural reasons, such as failure to prosecute with a speedy trial, since they don't want cases hanging around on the court's open-case docket forever, making the court's statistics look bad. (Even if there are good reasons for the delay, such as the parties working on reconciliation or dealing with other more pressing issues such as a child's medical or mental health crises.)

 

It's very disappointing that abovethelaw.com, which I believe is a blog specifically about the law, merely calls the judge "stupid" instead of looking at the actual law and reasoning involved in the case.