Chambers v. Ormiston
Supreme Court of Rhode Island
935 A.2d 956 (2007)
Margaret Chambers (plaintiff) and Cassandra Ormiston (defendant), both Rhode Island residents, married in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage was legal, and then returned home to Rhode Island. When Chambers later filed for divorce in Rhode Island Family Court and Ormiston answered and counterclaimed, the Family Court certified to the Rhode Island Supreme Court the question of whether it had jurisdiction to hear a divorce petition involving a same-sex marriage, since Rhode Island itself had no law or decision permitting same-sex marriage.
Whether, where the forum's law does not allow same-sex couples to marry, the family court's jurisdiction to grant divorces extends to a same-sex couple who was legally married in another state.