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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsoctogenarian lesbian widow in New York, is going toe-to-toe with the House Republicans on the
on the Defense of Marriage Act. Edith Windsor
Several challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act could reach the Supreme Court within the next year, but only one involves the estate tax that surviving same-sex spouses are forced to pay when a partner dies. The consequences can be severe, as Edith Windsor, the 83-year-old plaintiff in that case, learned after her wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009.
A mathematician and former IBM programmer, Windsor calculated the financial impact of 1996s DOMA, which just added to the unquantifiable pain of losing her partner of more than 40 years. She paid over $363,000 in federal estate taxes on two properties the couple owned, in Manhattan and on Long Island, solely because the U.S. government did not recognize their marriage. The women married in Canada in 2007 after first becoming engaged in 1967, and Windsor cared for Spyer, a clinical psychologist, as she battled multiple sclerosis for three decades.
However, if Thea had been Theo, I would have had to pay no estate tax whatsoever, she says. Even if I had met and married Theo one month before he died, I would have had to pay no estate tax.
That unequal treatment did not compute, and Windsor sued the government with help from the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. She argued that DOMA violated her equal protection rights, and in June a federal judge in New York agreed and found section 3 of the law, which limits the federal definition of marriage to unions of a man and a woman, unconstitutional.
http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2012/09/10/fight-edith-windsors-life?page=0,0
To be her age and have to deal with this? It's a disgrace.
Tigress DEM
(7,887 posts)She shouldn't have to, but she did and that's pretty awesome!
William769
(55,124 posts)I guess it's no to low taxes based on who you are.
efhmc
(14,709 posts)DevonRex
(22,541 posts)It made me gasp. If Thea had been Theo and they had married a month before Theo died there wouldn't have even been an estate tax to pay. But because she was Thea, Edith had to pay $363,000 in estate taxes even though they'd been together for four decades. Four decades. Think about that. They had married in Canada at some point along the way.
William769
(55,124 posts)xxqqqzme
(14,887 posts)trumped up biblical yammering. It is, fundamentally, a civil rights issue.
DevonRex
(22,541 posts)treated like any other two human beings who stayed together through richer and poorer, in sickness and in health.
Civil rights, human rights, plain old common sense and decency.
AnotherDreamWeaver
(2,846 posts)ToxMarz
(2,154 posts)To be her age and have to deal with this? It's a disgrace.
Yes it is and it is also awesome and inspirational. Hope I can kick that much ass still when I'm 83. I'm sure being in love helps with the burning fire.
WCGreen
(45,558 posts)This bull shit needs to stop. the bigotry of the past has no place in the 21st century and frankly speaking, if we don't address this now then how can we call ourselves a modern civil society.
I can't get over the fact that people truly believe that the acts of a stranger will weigh on how they are measured when God makes the ultimate choice between heaven and hell. What kind of God would do that?
xchrom
(108,903 posts)unapatriciated
(5,390 posts)My daughter has a home business and her wife is not afforded the same tax breaks that I and my husband would get if we had a small business. This is a civil rights issue that needs to be addressed and fixed.
edited to add that she is supporting her wife while she is getting her degree and can not even claim her as a dependent. This is soooo wrong in sooo many ways.
porphyrian
(18,530 posts)gollygee
(22,336 posts)and that marriage is a governmental rights issue, this is a good example to show them.
So totally unfair.
William769
(55,124 posts)Support for Edith Edie Windsor, the lesbian widow challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, continued to grow Friday as more than 15 parties, including members of Congress and three state attorneys general, filed briefs in support of her case, where oral arguments are scheduled in a federal appeals court in New York City on September 27.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Windsor, announced the multiple friend-of-the-court brief filings. Parties include the city of New York; the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont; 145 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives; the Partnership for New York City, a major business lobby; the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and labor, legal, and religious organizations.
The number and scope of the parties supporting Edies case illustrate the breadth of the harms that DOMA inflicts on married same-sex couples, said James Esseks, director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Project, in a news release. It is time for the courts to bring an end to this discriminatory law once and for all.
A federal judge in New York ruled section three of DOMA, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, unconstitutional in the case, Windsor v. United States, in June. The Republican-controlled House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group took up the defense of the 1996 law after the Obama administration declined to defend it last year, and BLAG has appealed the ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals encompassing New York, Connecticut and Vermont.
http://www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2012/09/10/wave-briefs-filed-edie-windsor%E2%80%99s-doma-case