"I know from 25 years of doing family law there are court orders out there which order somebody to pay alimony to somebody under a common law marriage decree and divorce. Somebody who's ordered to pay alimony would have a huge incentive to say, 'You can no longer enforce your decree against me because it's unconstitutional, so I'm going to stop writing my alimony checks,' " Corporon said.

Dani Eyer, director of the Utah chapter of the ACLU, said she expects the amendment to come up in a number of "nuts and bolts lawsuits" about the scope of the amendment's second part.

The court's duty in such cases, Eyer said, is to "narrowly interpret the Constitution . . . but it may arise that the amendment is problematic."

Utah is now one of 17 states where voters have written same-sex marriage bans into their state constitution. Opponents in Utah have said they'll take a wait-and-see approach before they challenge the federal constitutionality of Utah's amendment, but legal challenges are cropping up in other states.

Nebraska's marriage amendment is being challenged in federal court, as is Oklahoma's.

A judge overturned Louisiana's amendment — which bans both same-sex marriages and civil unions — on procedural grounds, saying it violated a state provision that allows just one subject in a constitutional amendment. That decision is under appeal.

Georgia's amendment also is under court challenge for violating the two-sentence rule.

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com; lindat@desnews.com