Gay breakups hard to do in Minnesota

07/29/09 Star Tribune:

While heterosexual couples' breakups are difficult and daunting, they face fewer hurdles than do their same-sex counterparts here. "If they have children, they go into family courts, and if they own property together, they go to civil court," said Melissa Houghtaling, a lawyer with the GLBT- focused firm Heltzer & Burg. "Whereas if they were a heterosexual married couple, they could go to one court to deal with all of that. Same-sex couples can have two lawsuits going on at one time, whereas heterosexual couples would have one dissolution case" ... Going to civil court involves what another GLBT attorney, Jonathan Burris, calls "a very archaic legal process called partition of a business partnership, which is always a long, slow road because of the extraordinary expense and overloaded court dockets."