Same-sex legal groundbreaker: Judge says Rock Hill couple married in S.C. for decades
ROCK HILL -- Debra Parks wanted to be treated the same as anybody else by the courts. At 62, she’s disabled, and split from her partner of almost four decades. She filed a lawsuit because she wanted her relationship, which ended last year, to be considered a common law marriage under South Carolina law.
Parks is gay. But until 2015, same-sex marriage was illegal.
“I was in a same-sex relationship for all those years,” Parks said. “We owned a house together. We were a family, even when society didn’t accept it.”
Now, in what legal experts and Parks’ lawyers say is a groundbreaking case for South Carolina, and possibly for other states with common law marriage, a Family Court judge in York County has ruled that Parks and her former partner had a common law marriage under state law. And the state must recognize that their common law marriage has been legal for almost 30 years, the judge ruled.
Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/article139540723.html