At a press conference in, of all places, Senegal - which currently makes homosexuality a criminal offense - President Obama said
"It's my personal belief -- but I'm speaking now as a President as opposed to as a lawyer -- that if you've been married in Massachusetts and you move someplace else, you're still married, and that under federal law you should be able to obtain the benefits of any lawfully married couple. But I'm speaking as a President, not a lawyer.
Currently, some Federal benefits are provided on the basis of where a marriage ceremony took place, while some Federal benefits are provided depending on whether your marriage is recognized in the state you are residing in.
We now have to comb through every federal statute. And although we hadn't pre-judged what the ruling had been, I had asked my White House Counsel to help work with lawyers across every agency in the federal government to start getting a sense of what statutes would be implicated and what it will mean for us to administratively apply the rule that federal benefits apply to all married couples... What's true though is that you still have a whole bunch of states that do not recognize it. The Supreme Court continues to leave it up to the states to make these decisions. And we are going to have to go back and do a legal analysis of what that means.
This is going to be a nightmare, but at least the President has indicated what he wants to be the case.
Want to move from New York to Florida to retire as a same-sex couple? Better consider what the effect on your spouse will be if you or he/she dies. Even if Edie Windsor will get her inheritance tax monies back, doesn't necessarily mean you won't have to pay if your spouse dies while you are living in the wrong state.
It's going to be worse than a nightmare, because it will be real life. Bureaucrats. Appeals. Contradictory rulings. Only if Congress were to pass (hahahahahahaha) legislation making it clear that all Federal benefits accrue to married coupled regardless of where they are residing will this cease to be an issue in the near term. That's about as likely as the Potomac parting for John Boehner.