Following on the heels on the Supreme Court ruling same sex marriage legal, a spate of lawsuits have entered the court system seeking to clarify how actions taken to emulate marriage benefits before the ruling fare after it. In this instance, a New York same-sex couple had a commitment ceremony in 2002 along with one of the partner’s will being altered to make the other a half beneficiary. However, the two separated in 2010 and when the testator died his former boyfriend inherited half of the approximately $1 million estate prompting a legal challenge. The mother of the testator argued that the commitment ceremony equated a marriage and that the couples separation represented a divorce which automatically disinherits a former spouse under New York law. But an appeals court disagreed stating that nothing in the Supreme Court ruling or state law made commitment ceremonies into a legal marriage and, even if they did, no formal legal action was taken to dissolve the marriage as required in the statute disinheriting a former spouse. In the coming years we should expect to see more cases such as this as the judiciary establishes the legal parameters of same-sex marriage.
See Lorelei Laird, SCOTUS same-sex marriage ruling did not make commitment ceremonies marriages, state court says, ABA Journal, January 6, 2016.
Special thanks to Naomi Cahn for bringing this article to my attention.
