RENWL

Photo courtesy of 10thousandcouples.com

Does anyone else know about this? And if we’re late to the game well we’re writing a post about it anyway. According to the blog of New York city bankruptcy law specialists Dwyer & Associates, married gay couples and heterosexual couples in domestic partnership cannot file bankruptcy together unlike straight couples. This applies to ALL married gay couples in the US. Since filing bankruptcy is a federal law, the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) prohibits federal recognition of a bankruptcy filed by a gay or domestic partner couple.

We did some further research and discovered that in the state of California, not only are same sex married couples unable to file joint bankruptcy, but they’re not protected by federal laws which allows straight couples to keep enough property to support both husband and wife.

Back in 2004 a Washington state lesbian couple who’d been together 13 years and legally married in British Columbia for one year both got struck with cancer at the same time. The couple filed joint bankruptcy when the medical bills mounted but DOMA blocked the filing and the couple went to US Bankruptcy court to fight it. However the judge ruled DOMA constitutional and once again the filing was denied.

It should be noted that while the current case filed against DOMA by GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders) in Massachusetts—Gill et al. v. Office of Personnel Management et al—-the case addresses the use of DOMA Section 3 to deny spousal protections in Social Security, federal income tax, federal employees’ and retirees’ benefits, and in the issuance of passports, it doesn’t mention federal bankruptcy laws as they stand in regard to same sex marriages.

Now we’re not lawyers or legal eagles by any stretch. But it kinda does stand to reason (and if there’s a lawyer reading this please help us out) that if the other federal benefits denied like Social Security, passports, retiree benefits were outlined in the GLAD Complaint, then it would be necessary to outline all the federal benefits currently denied to same sex couples—-like the ability to file jointly for bankruptcy. And the word “bankruptcy” is nowhere to be found in the Gill Complaint. We checked. So what does this mean we wonder? Even if the Gill case when does win does it still mean same sex couples won’t be able to file bankruptcy together? Would that have to be another lawsuit?

We’ll await some expert feedback for this one.

Link to Gill Complaint PDF file: Gill et al. v. Office of Personnel Management et al

Possibly Related Posts:

• California Fed Worker Sues Obama Administration For Same-Sex Benefits
• Everyone Calm Down On Obama DOJ’s DOMA Brief!