As we approach the inauguration of someone who has the potential to be the most equality-minded President ever -- for everyone, including gay people like me -- I'm stepping back for a moment to reflect on the value of my marriage and where my spouse and I, and people like us, are right now.
To be honest, it makes me a little nervous to do it.
And I don't just mean intrinsic, spiritual meaning. I'm talking raw finances here.
Let me explain.
My spouse and I recently married in California. That's limbo enough. You see, California Attorney General Jerry Brown says our marriage remains recognized in California. The conservative christians who funded Yes On 8 have sued to have our marriage, and approximately 18,000 others, annulled in light of Prop 8's passage. The arguments on the case don't happen until March at the earliest, and then the court has, I think, up to 120 days to rule. That means we won't even know if our marriage remains legally valid until possibly July. That's only six months!, you might say. If it were your marriage, six months might seem like an eternity to you, too.
Meanwhile, we can't just go get married in another state where our rights are more secure, say, Massachusetts or Connecticut. We contacted them and asked. They already recognize our marriage as legal...until further notice. So, there's no way to ultimately secure the document against what could happen to us if the California Supreme Court rules in favor of the Yes On 8 supporters. We are stuck.
Add to that the fact that we live in a red state. There is a law on the books that says the state refuses to recognize our marriage, and, just in case some court decides to get all fair-minded, a constitutional amendment to bar our marriage from being recognized, too. Voters passed it by a 3-to-1 margin.
We know our marriage license isn't valid here. That wasn't the point. The point was to be able to enjoy marrying, just like anyone else in love, and to outwardly manifest our dedication to one another for others to see. And it's our intention to, at some point, move to be where our marriage (should it remain valid) IS recognized. Until then, though, we have to face the realities of having coupled in a place that has intentionally constructed a legal structure to treat us as strangers, regardless of how close we are. We can't ignore our responsibilities to one another even if the state wants to prevent us from being able to fulfill them.
We see the responsible thing to do as doing everything we can to legally protect ourselves. Confronting that reality is an exercise in financial insanity.
First, my spouse will most likely be laid off in less than a week. With the layoff come a couple of helpful things -- severance and, potentially, paid health coverage for another few to several months. Since my spouse's job has been very stressful, I view the layoff as a blessing in disguise in some ways, a door open to a lower stress life for him (I hope). Eventually, the money will run out and we'll just have my lower income to live on. I am not able to cover my spouse for healthcare, however. I work for the state government. It does not provide what they term "domestic partner benefits". My spouse's company, being a Fortune 500 employer, does. Since it's my spouse being laid off, we won't be able to have that option. Even if we did, since the federal government does not recognize our relationship in any way, even if I could cover my spouse for healthcare, the monetary value of that insurance coverage provided by my employer would be considered by the IRS as income my spouse received. He would have to pay taxes on thousands of dollars, even if no appointment was ever made with a doctor. On my income, we can't afford that anyway. And we can't file jointly, which might blunt the effect of that blow.
Second, there's the matter of protecting ourselves in the case of death or disaster. Neither of our families are particularly supportive; my spouse's family is particularly nastily unsupportive of our marriage. Were my spouse to perish today and our assets land in probate court, the state considers me a stranger to my spouse. The next closest relative is an evangelical christian one state over who considers us something close to axe-murderers. The most likely outcome for us in that case would be similar to that of a couple we knew in their 40s who had been together for over a decade. One of them suddenly passed away, and he made more money than the other; most of the assets were in his name. They had no documents legally protecting their assets in this event (they were in their 40s and hadn't given it much thought in a hectic life), and the recently-deceased's family came and took everything. Even items which they had purchased together were awarded by the probate judge to the family. Our surviving friend was left homeless and stripped of most of his material wealth, including a vehicle and his pets. If the couple had been straight, after a certain period of time together (which they had long surpassed), the state would have considered theirs a common-law marriage and the family's robbery would have been considerably more difficult.
We don't wish to end up that way. For that reason, we've been looking at how to safeguard what we have separately and together built financially and materially. The first thing we did was to change my last name. It's an appearance thing, but it's more powerful than one might think. The same last name means "family" immediately to a lot of people. My best example just happened a couple of days ago. I became very ill and we made a 1:00 a.m. trip to the emergency room. One of the very first questions the ER doctor asked my spouse was, "Are you related?" If you're not a legal relative to the patient, the doctor can tell you to leave and bar you from the room. The hospital does not have to permit you to see one another. My spouse thought quickly and just said, "Yes," the doctor noted same last names, and it was left at that. This is not a problem people who are married have to expect.
Then there's the death issues. When the Prop 8 mess blew up, Suze Orman, who's a lesbian and apparently a well-known financial guru (guresse?), made available free of charge a website where gay couples can go to put together legal protections for themselves and each other in the event of death, medical incapacitation, and so on. We had meant to make these arrangements and have now begun to go through the steps she prescribes there for us to make sure that our shared material and financial foundation is secure in the event of unforeseen tragedy.
Even with all her expert advice and the clear forms she makes available there, even with all the clear discussion of what to do in which situation and which form or legal instrument to pursue, we're terribly, terribly confused. Notwithstanding the mild emotional turmoil of considering the idea of the person that we each love more than ourselves dying or being incapacitated, we are bewildered as we try to figure out what applies to us and what doesn't. There are options for people who have a "properly filed marriage license", and options for people who are domestic partners who wish to keep their assets separate. What about people with civil unions? What about people who are legally considered married in a few states, but not in their own? What if your state has one of those amendments that not only bars recognition of your marriage, but anything that resembles it (without actually defining what that is)? Does that still leave us open to attack from my spouse's family? We don't really know. Lawyers might know, but that knowledge could cost us thousands of dollars.
And even if we get it right, the distinction in the inheritance taxes between transfer to a spouse and to anyone else can be massive. We don't yet know what the implications of all this are for that. Would the survivor of us have to sell the house, just to pay the taxes? What cruel news that would be. And, unless something changes federally, we won't have access to one another's Social Security, either. There is no document outside a federally-recognized marriage license that can guarantee us that.
Then there's the fact that, if and when we move to another state, our legal status will change. We'll live someplace where our relationship will have legal recognition, but there's no sure guarantee of what that recognition will look like. We've made a pact to avoid states that bar us outright, but in this economy, with my spouse to be laid off shortly, the job search can't be too narrow geographically. It might be that we end up in Oregon, or Vermont, or New Jersey, or another state which doesn't at this time recognize our marriage, but does recognize our relationship. It'll take another piece of paper -- and then we'll have to do all of this all over again in view of our "new" legal status. Because of the Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996 (DOMA), no civil union or domestic partnership is portable.
Of course, this is complicated by the fact that my spouse is about to be laid off. The easiest course of action for us would be to stay put and to go back to school (we live close to good, relatively inexpensive universities), but the farther we go together, the more vulnerable we realize we are if we stay put. Do we stay here and squeak by, and hope nothing goes wrong? Or do we spend resources to go somewhere else legally safer when what resources we have already may be likely to be stretched thin soon?
Suze Orman explains in one part of what we've seen as we do this process that rather than just a simple will, we need to create a revocable trust. Now, a will, she explains, can be a fairly simple document to prepare. It doesn't cost a lawyer a lot of time (and therefore the person a lot of money) -- perhaps a couple of hours and a few to several hundred dollars -- to put together. But when it goes to probate, the lawyer and the executor each get to take a chunk out of the estate before it gets into the hands of the actual beneficiary or beneficiaries. And it's a lot of money. A trust, she says, take care of the steps that probate would deal with and lands the assets in the hands of the beneficiary or beneficiaries without all the hubbub and those fees...but it takes a great deal more time to set up, and thus can cost several thousand dollars to create and then fund.
Hundreds to thousands of dollars in legal fees...just to protect this one single right of inheritance. There are so many others -- I think the number is something like 2700 rights and responsibilities -- we can't fathom which would be guaranteed if, everywhere, the $75 marriage license we received on a gorgeous day in September weren't endangered by Proposition 8 and invalidated across state lines by the Defense of Marriage Act. If you think you're hungry for change, imagine how desperate we are for it. "Hope" doesn't even begin to cover it.