For those who don’t know, Colin and I got married… a few months ago (uh, I don’t think I wrote down the date).
Marriage has never been something we’ve felt as emotionally important to us, and we already felt totally committed to each other (especially with a baby on the way!). But we decided to get married for a number of practical reasons. Basically, since Colin started his business in January and hasn’t been bringing in any income, it will make sense for us to file taxes jointly with me as the bread-winner this year. Secondly, we want the maximum protection we can have for our family now that little Calix will be joining us. Getting married makes things incredibly easy. Nobody will ever question what will happen if something were to happen to one or the other of us. Also, our finances are automatically jointly owned, so we don’t have to try to keep track of out of whose bank account we’re spending which expenses out or what will happen to the house I bought if something happens to me. And, it’s nice in some ways to think of ourselves as married.
This is all very convenient! And here is what we had to do. We had to go to a King County office near us on a Saturday and wait in a line with a bunch of other couples to get a marriage license. Then we had to not get married during the 3-day waiting period. Then we had to have a friend who had authority to perform marriages (by becoming a minister on the internet) and two witnesses around. We had to say “I take you to be my husband or wife.” Then we all had to sign a piece of paper and send it to King County by the United States Postal Service.
That’s it! That’s all there was to it. Colin and I have been together for over 6 years, but we could have done the same thing if we had just met. Our lives have become easier and safer in a lot of ways with that piece of paper.
But if anything, the ease with which we were able to execute the whole thing has made me even more seethingly upset about my sister’s situation. Here’s her story.
My sister and her partner have been together for about the same amount of time as Colin and I have been. On October 7, 2006, they had a beautiful wedding ceremony surrounded by a very fun wedding weekend. The whole family and many friends flew in to attend the festivities. My sister wore a gorgeous embroidered flowing white dress. A professional photographer took pictures. There was a fancy dinner and a big cake. It was a wedding.
Two years later, my sister and her partner have four-month-old twins! They balanced finances, planned the timing, and went through many getting-pregnant anxieties, just as Colin and I did. But the security and conveniences Colin and I got from a 5-minute signing and dropping of a piece of paper in the mail, my sister cannot have.
Everything is a comparatively huge struggle.
To use each other’s health insurance, they have to be lucky enough to be working for an employer who happens to offer domestic partnership benefits, or they have to have enough clout with their employer to convince them to do so.
In order for her partner to be considered a parent to their children, my sister has to give up parental rights to them, and then they both have to adopt the children. This involves a months-long engagement of a lawyer to deal with all of the paperwork. They hope to have this completed sometime next year. Lots of time and money.
Then there are all of the other papers and fees for having power of attorney and wills, and I don’t know what all else. And no matter how much money and time they pour into it all, they still will never have the situation that Colin and I do. Certainly, for example, they have no rights to any federal benefits such as filing taxes together now that my sister is staying home with the babies.
And as for security, they are always at risk of laws changing out from under them or homophobic family members challenging in court what they have set up for themselves.
Colin and I paid $64 to get married – the cost of the license. Everything is taken care of. Oh yeah, and $0.42 for the stamp.
I think the contrast between my sister’s situation and my own is a deplorable injustice in our country. I can only think that in future generations, our grandchildren will look back on this aspect of our times with shock and scorn. Until then, I suppose all we can do is to fight unfair ballot measures and bills and the people that support them, and to keep telling the stories of people like my sister, which point out this terrible inequality in our system.
December 9, 2008 at 11:16 pm
You make the case for simple, equal, human justice eloquently, logically & powerfully. This forceful piece should be submitted to newspapers & forwarded to Congress & Obama (and any higher powers.)
December 11, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Thanks for sharing my story (and the story of so many others). We definitely have to take a more challenging route to create our family legally. Some things I wanted to point out:
-we are so lucky to be living in new York, where same sex second parent adoption is legal (it is not legal in some other states, such as Ohio)
– we pay my health insurance after taxes, as well as are taxed on the money Anna’s company pays for my taxes (they consider what her company spends to be additional “income” which is then taxed)
-we cannot use a flex spending account jointly, as this is a federal benefit
-The babies’ insurance and flex spending are similar to mine at this point, but once they are adopted their insurance payments will be taken out pre-tax and there will be no additional taxes for them.
-Even in a will, I will never be considered “next of kin” to Anna, and vice versa, unless the laws change. When Anna adopts the babies, they will be considered her next of kin and will have more rights than I do.
It has amazed me that I had no idea the benefits that we would miss out on until we tried to get them. I wonder what other inequalities there are that we have not stumbled upon as of yet…