The East Coast seems to be moving faster than the "Left Coast" in implementing laws that allow for same-gender, legal unions ranging from marriage to civil unions to domestic partnerships and otherwise. This seems to be in line with the sweeping scope of Western Civilization from Europe to Canada which already have done so. It presents nontraditional challenges to searching and assessing title.
An example of the problem in sunny California: gay marriage was legal for a few months before it was shut down by voter-approved proposition. The vital records indexes for marriage reflect fields for husband and wife, but if the subject (male, for instance) was indexed in field two, then the marriage certificate (issued during that few months and with another male) could be missed in a vital record search. I've run into this problem already in genealogy research, but not yet in title matters, but it's just a matter of time.
What steps are you taking to ensure that your research is being done objectively in order to account for the changing laws and demographics across various jurisdictions? This is not a question that is pro or con to the issue of such marriages; just a discussion about the practical aspects of our research and review methodologies.
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