Special concerns for GLBT and non-traditional relationships

1. Is it easier to be married than to be unmarried? Having a marriage gives you a legal framework that affords your kids predictability during and after the marriage. You leave more to chance in an unmarried relationship. That means if you’re ending an unmarried relationship, you need to do more of the legwork on your own to include things in the divorce agreement that you want to protect yourself because the existing framework isn’t detailed enough.

2. What do we have to remember about ending a non-traditional relationships? You can agree by contract to many, if not all, of the same things that married people agree to. Your contract needs to be detailed because not as much is assumed by default in non-traditional relationships.

3. How is custody shared in gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender relationships? Child custody can be agreed in non-traditional relationships just as in traditional relationships. Child custody depends on the best interests of the child, which is one of the ways that the court system actually does right by non-traditional families, among many ways that it does not.