AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - 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.
"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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