The
ruling makes clear that married gay couples living in states that recognize
their unions will immediately gain access to more than 1,000 federal benefits, like Social
Security and family leave rights. Less certain is how couples living in the
remaining 37 states will fare.
The Supreme Court has been busy
this year, dealing with many important topics all around. But few issues have
been so drastically altered as that of same-sex marriage.
The Supreme Court, in its last
actions of this term, rendered two important decisions on the topic of same-sex
marriage. Now it’s time to figure out what these rulings mean moving forward. A
recent article in The New York Times,
titled “How the Court’s Ruling Will Affect Same-Sex
Spouses,”
provides a good start.
For those planning for their
estates, the important decision was rendered in US v. Windsor, a case many have been following quite intently and
for good reason. The case centered on a common conundrum of many in same-sex
marriages: married by state law, but strangers by federal law. And of course,
the Federal law in issue was The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, as signed
into law by President Clinton. DOMA changed the definition of marriage to
literally require different gender partners, but this has been struck down.
Consequently, all of the federal
benefits ascribed to the term “marriage” will extend to same-sex marriages as
well. These include, but are not limited to, social security, estate and gift
tax law, and common law spousal provisions. In short, it’s a groundswell and
the ground won’t stop moving until we figure out all of the ramifications.
Read the original article for
more specifics, but many questions remain. For example, and perhaps most importantly from an estate planning perspective, will estate planning be
just the same for same-sex marriage now?
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Reference: The New York
Times (June 26, 2013) “How the Court’s Ruling Will Affect Same-Sex
Spouses”