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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3538 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025

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The state supreme court finds that (1) the federal supreme court's decision does require Nevada to retroactively recognize the 2008 California marriage, but (2) Nevada's courts are not authorized to create out of thin air a 1992 common-law marriage for these same-sex romantic partners when Nevada's legislature has explicitly refused to recognize common-law marriages even for opposite-sex romantic partners since 1943.

That seems a reasonable enough conclusion for these specific facts, but good heavens do I get twitchy about these sort of retroactive judicial decisions being decided this late in the game. Here, it's 'just' one guy's 401(k) and some stocks, and while that probably sucks for his ex-husband's finances, there's a lot of other stuff that's downstream of this sorta divorce evaluation, and it's been five years since this pair filed for divorce, and a decade since Obergefell. It's just been up in the air that whole time?

There's not really a good solution, I recognize that. Party presentation exists for a reason, Mootness and ripeness same, and past attempts to set up blanket rules for this stuff have been an absolute mess. But it's like the first line to an Aristocrats joke that ends with the shout "a Justice System".

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