Texas' ban on gay marriage means same-sex couples also are prohibited from getting a divorce in the state, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Tuesday.
A district judge in Austin last week granted a divorce to Sabina Daly of San Antonio and Angelique Naylor of Austin, who married in Massachusetts in 2004. A day later, Abbott filed a motion to block the divorce before it was entered into the official record.
Abbott told the San Antonio Express-News on Tuesday that because the marriage was not valid in Texas, neither was the divorce. Texans overwhelmingly voted to ban same-sex marriages in 2005.
Abbott's filing says the couple's relationship should be legally voided.
"Texas can't have a faulty precedent on the books that validates an illegal law," Abbott said.
The attorney general filed a similar appeal last year after a judge cleared the way for two Dallas men to divorce.
Abbot's latest motion will be costly for Daly and Naylor, said Bob Luther, an attorney for Daly.
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"It matters because it leads to a lot of unnecessary expenses on the part of the two parties," Luther said.
Naylor, meanwhile, told the Austin American-Statesman that the divorce brought peace to the family.
"We never asked them to grant us a same-sex marriage," Naylor said. "We only asked them to legally recognize that we needed a divorce."
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