A Boone County judge has allowed what legal experts believe is the first divorce granted in a same-sex marriage in Missouri, which has a constitutional amendment against recognizing same-sex marriages.

In a ruling handed down last month, Boone County Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider granted a divorce for Dena and Samantha Latimer, who were married in Massachusetts in 2009 and lived in Columbia. She ruled that under the legal doctrine of "comity," which essentially means the recognition of the laws of another jurisdiction, a Missouri court can recognize the law of where the marriage was performed "for the limited purpose of granting equitable relief."

Schneider's ruling says that, while Missouri's Defense of Marriage Act prohibits a court from recognizing a same-sex marriage, Missouri courts have made judgments on marriages that were not valid to begin with, such as a 1993 Western District Missouri Court of Appeals judgment on a marriage in which the parties failed to obtain a marriage license.

Considering those cases, Schneider ruled, "the court maintains an authority to enter judgment with respect to a marriage that is not legally recognized."

Further, Schneider ruled that by denying same-sex couples the ability to void or dissolve their marriages, the state "runs afoul of its due process obligations" under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Columbia attorney Tana Benner, who represented Dena Latimer in the case, said that while divorces are rarely a positive experience for the parties involved, she felt that the Latimers were at least pleased that the judge granted the divorce.

"I think they just wanted to get some relief," Benner said. "They were in a position where they didn't think it would be possible."

Christopher Clark, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal's Chicago office, confirmed that the divorce is the first in Missouri that the organization is aware of, but said courts in other states that do not recognize same-sex marriages have granted divorces for same-sex couples using the same basic reasoning that Schneider used in the Latimers' divorce.

"Same-sex couples are like everybody else in that they have relationships that sometimes don't work out," Clark said.

When Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, it also made a requirement that a couple must "establish domicile" in the state. Thus, if a couple is married in the state and moves to a state that does not recognize their marriage, they cannot go back to Massachusetts to have their divorce granted.

In 2004, Missouri voters approved an amendment to the state constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Seventy-one percent of ballots were cast in favor of the measure.

The amendment effectively prohibits state courts from recognizing a same-sex marriage.

About four years after the amendment was adopted, a same-sex couple who were also married in Massachusetts sought an annulment in Buchanan County.

An annulment differs from a divorce in that it is retroactive and essentially means that the marriage never happened. With divorce, the court recognizes that two people were married at some point and, at some later point, the marriage ended.

Then-state Sen. Delbert Scott, R-Lowry City, who was term limited out of office in 2010, filed an amicus brief in that case to call on the court not to recognize the marriage for the purposes of annulment because that would amount to recognizing that the marriage exists. Buchanan County Circuit Judge Dan Kellogg granted the annulment anyway.

Clark said that by granting divorces rather than annulments, a court is able to act as a "referee" between the two parties to ensure a fair split of assets and child custody.

This article was published in the Sunday, May 4, 2014 edition of the Columbia Daily Tribune with the headline "Local judge grants gay couple a divorce:�Might be the first time in the state."