Gay Couples Struggle Over Support Issues

Rachel Small — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:00:00 -0500

"One of the benefits of marriage is divorce," says, Joyce Kauffman, a lawyer who handles same-sex divorce in Massachusetts. She has made some incisive observations about what gay and lesbian married couples go through to achieve a divorce. When these couples split up, they run into barriers of institutional discrimination not experienced by heterosexual couples or in any other area of the law.

Yesterday, we talked about custody issues. Child support in a lesbian divorce action becomes a problem in situations where the former wife has not adopted the children of the biological mother. Without a legal or biological connection, the custodial parent was unable to collect child support. Kauffman strongly advises each party to adopt each other's children so gay couples would be in a similar legal position as straight couples in seeking child support.

Alimony is another area where same-sex couples are treated differently. In Massachusetts, there is equality in marriage for all, but those laws are not applicable in other states, nor at the federal level. Under IRS rules, alimony paid by a heterosexual to an ex-spouse is tax deductible, but the same rules do not apply to same-sex couples, even though they were legally married.

To me, this is unfair and discriminatory. Why should the federal government, the tax office no less, determine that gay alimony is different from straight alimony? This amounts to government sanctioned discrimination rationalized on the basis that their marriages are not recognized by the feds. As divorce attorney David Epperly put it, "federal law looks at gay divorcées as strangers."

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Gay Couples Struggle Over Support Issues