From your article, to give a high-light of some of the issues involved...
Heterosexual couples claim a tax deduction for alimony payments, but that benefit is not available to gay and lesbian spouses because the Internal Revenue Service does not recognize their marriages.
Divorce lawyers say that, while gay people making alimony payments are hurt the most by the IRS policy, their ex-spouses are also affected, because a tax deduction often provides an incentive for larger payments.
"In a straight context, alimony is an income stream from one person to another and tax-deductible to the person who is paying it," said David W. Eppley, a divorce lawyer with lesbian clients. "But in a gay divorce, there aren't two parties, there are three, and that third party is Uncle Sam."
Michael, a 42-year-old Bostonian whose divorce settlement precludes him from speaking publicly about its details, met his older and far wealthier spouse 17 years before they were able to marry. He came to the relationship fresh out of college, with no assets and little means of independent support.
....
Retirement savings and pension plans, easily split for heterosexual couples divorcing, would have to be cashed out and would be heavily taxed for gay couples. Current tax law allows only $12,000 to be transferred from one gay spouse to another without being subject to a gift tax.
"Federal law looks at gay divorcees as strangers," Eppley said. "Bob can't transfer property to Steve without it counting as a taxable transfer, whether in capital gains or a gift and potentially both."
....
Under Massachusetts law, both people seeking a divorce must reside in the state. That left Cassandra Ormiston and Margaret Chambers of Rhode Island in a bind. The two were wed in Massachusetts in 2004, soon after the state legalized same-sex marriages. But in 2006, they filed for divorce in their home state, where the law is silent on whether such marriages are legal.
The divorce issue then fell to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, which ruled in December that the state's family court lacks the authority to grant a divorce for same-sex couples because the state legislature has not defined marriage as anything other than a union between a man and a woman.
"There is now no way for me to get divorced unless I move back to Massachusetts, establish residency and then wait a year before I file, and I simply will not do that," a bitter Ormiston said after the ruling.
And then you have some that claim that gays just have to find a lawyer to create legal documents to get "marriage benefits", often ignoring the fact that in most ways that claim is just plain a bald-faced lie.
(for example, here in divorce "everybody" has a lawyer, yet the problems abound)
But even all this won't interest some people, unless you show how it's affecting the straight people. I remember one thread that showed "marriage / civil union" inequality whereby a man married a woman, the two divorced, and then the woman started in a committed relationship (I believe even legally recognized) with another woman.
The man sued to stop alimony, but since the "ex-wife" was not "married", he lost.
Amazing how some people came out of the wood-works to suddenly insist that gays start utilizing a specific "marital" benefits...
But of course, it's NOT "marriage", is it...
01-02-2008, 03:52 PM
Same-Sex Divorce Challenges the Legal System
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