Two Pennsylvania women long locked in a civil union will finally be able to dissolve their legal relationship after a precedent-setting court finding last week.
The Pennsylvania Superior Court issued a unanimous ruling Dec. 28 that Freyda Neyman and Florence Buckley’s civil union created “the functional equivalent of marriage for purposes of dissolution.”
The couple traveled to Vermont for a civil union in 2002 but ended their relationship later that year. At that time, Vermont law mandated one of the women move to the state for at least six months in order to dissolve the union.
The Civil Division of Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas had dissolved a few civil unions, but that practice ceased in 2012, after a Commonwealth Court ruling that civil unions should be treated equal to marriage — the dissolution of which is handled by Family Court.
However, a Family Court judge last summer dismissed Neyman’s petition, saying a civil union is not equal to marriage and, thus, the case should not be in the court’s jurisdiction.
Neyman filed an appeal to Superior Court.
The appellate court found that any future petitions to dissolve civil unions can be handled in Family Court. Tiffany L. Palmer of Jerner & Palmer, P.C., who argued the case with Mazzoni Center legal and public-policy director Thomas W. Ude, Jr., said the opinion importantly stipulates that civil-union divorces be treated equally to divorces for financial purposes.
“What’s really exciting about this decision is it doesn’t just give relief to get the divorce decree, but also with respect to financial issues: They can seek alimony and equal distribution of property,” Palmer said. “Things will proceed now under the same rules that govern divorce.”
Because they were still tied to one another, neither Neyman nor Buckley were able to marry or add a partner to their health-insurance plans. They had worked out a custody agreement for their now-adult twin sons but, because of the civil union, Neyman wasn’t able to establish a legal connection to her current partner and child.
“Up until now, people who have civil unions have been in legal limbo,” Palmer said. “Pennsylvania never had a civil-union law and the case that addressed same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania, Whitewood v. Wolf, and the U.S. Supreme Court case, Obergefell, both were silent with respect to civil unions. That left a lot of people in states that didn’t have specific civil-union laws in complete limbo as to what was the nature of what they have. This very clearly says a civil union is the functional equivalent of marriage and therefore laws that relate to marriage, at least under state laws, should apply.”
“This decision is important to Freyda and to the many other Pennsylvanians whose civil unions far outlasted their actual relationships,” Ude added. “They will now finally be able to obtain court decrees that bring those unions to a recognizable end.”