Margaret Chambers and Cassandra Ormiston married in Massachusetts and are now filing for divorce in Rhode Island.

They filed for divorce in Rhode Island on Oct. 23, citing irreconcilable differences, Chambers’ attorney, Louis Pulner, said Wednesday. Ormiston declined to comment.

…snip…

“Now the ultimate question is whether the state will recognize or determine whether it has jurisdiction to handle an out-of-state divorce when we don’t have any case law that accepts or rejects same-sex marriage,” Pulner said.

It has only been a couple of months since same-sex couples in Rhode Island were given the right to marry in Massachusetts “because laws in their home state do not expressly prohibit same-sex marriage.”

“Judge clears R.I. gays to marry in Massachusetts” (September 29, 2006):

Wendy Becker and Mary Norton of Providence, R.I., argued that a 1913 law that forbids out-of-state residents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be permitted in their home state did not apply to them because Rhode Island does not specifically ban same-sex marriage.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly agreed.

Challenges from same-sex couples from five other states were unsuccessful.

Eight couples from six nearby states challenged the law. In March the Massachusetts supreme judicial court ruled that Massachusetts could use the 1913 law to bar gay couples from Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont from marrying here. But the court said the laws were unclear in New York and Rhode Island and sent that part of the case back to a lower court for clarification.

In July, New York State’s highest court said that its state law limits marriage to between a man and a woman. Connolly cited the New York court’s decision in his ruling, saying that state expressly prohibits same-sex marriage. That left only the Rhode Island couples free to marry in Massachusetts.

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