Lawrence Roach agreed to pay alimony to the woman he divorced, not the man she became after a sex change, his lawyers argued Tuesday in an effort to end the payments. But the ex-wife's attorneys said the operation doesn't alter the agreement.
The lawyers and Circuit Judge Jack R. St. Arnold agreed the case delves into relatively unchartered legal territory. They found only a 2004 Ohio case that addressed whether or not a transsexual could still collect alimony after a sex change.
"There is not a lot out there to help us," St. Arnold said.
Roach and his wife, Julia, divorced in 2004 after 18 years of marriage. The 48-year-old utility worker agreed to pay her $1,250 a month in alimony. Since then, Julia Roach, 55, had a sex change and legally changed her name to Julio Roberto Silverwolf.
"It's illegal for a man to marry a man and it should likewise be illegal for a man to pay alimony to a man," Roach's attorney John McGuire said. "When she changed to man, I believe she terminated that alimony."
Silverwolf did not appear in court Tuesday and has declined to talk about the divorce. His lawyer, Gregory Nevins, said the language of the divorce decree is clear and firm Roach agreed to pay alimony until his ex-wife dies or remarries.
"Those two things haven't happened," said Nevins, a senior staff attorney with the national gay rights group Lambda Legal.
It's an interesting case, though. I'm no law-talkin' guy, but I'd suggest that in a sense, one of those two conditions has been met. If you think about it, the woman he married has, in a way, ceased to exist. She's no longer female and she's legally changed her identity. She's not exactly dead, but she's not really there anymore, is she?
If anybody who has legal training wants to give their take on my (I'm assuming probably half-baked) theory, please leave a comment.
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