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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

> Tax, immigration/emigration, and will/inheritance reasons.

Inheritance should be simple enough with normal contracts, regardless of marriage (same goes for hospital visitation and medical decision-making, which you didn't mention). Immigration is already completely arbitrary, at the whim of the government. The government could change the immigration effects of marriage just as easily as changing who can get married. That brings us to taxes. Well, that's already an extremely obvious violation of the equal protection clause. Why should married people's taxes be any different than single people's taxes?

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> Inheritance should be simple enough with normal contracts, regardless of marriage (same goes for hospital visitation and medical decision-making, which you didn't mention).

Should be, but isn't. Gay couples have been having expensive lawyers write these contracts for twenty years or so and when push comes to shove, they often don't mean shit. That's why we have been pushing for marriage rights.

The other issue is divorce. I know someone who is going through the end of a messy breakup with his long-term boyfriend. They met before marriage or civil partnership were a thing and the process of untangling shared assets, property, mortgages and so on is really complicated.

> Should be, but isn't. Gay couples have been having expensive lawyers write these contracts for twenty years or so and when push comes to shove, they often don't mean shit. That's why we have been pushing for marriage rights.

Yes. It's a shortcut, and I completely understand why people want to take it.

Even though getting married is relatively easy compared to being divorced, we essentially sue the other party and let a supposedly neutral party decide :)

Divorce is pretty easy compared to marriage. Like you said, it's just figuring out who gets what...

Sure, but divorce is something that hasn't been available for same sex couples. Everyone jokes about it "ha ha, next it'll be gay divorce", but actually being able to have someone divide up one's assets in a courtroom is preferable to having no proper legal recourse at all.

I seem to remember reading that Kara Swisher of Recode is going through one...

>Inheritance should be simple enough with normal contracts, regardless of marriage

No. United State v Windsor (the DOMA case) proved that. Spouses have estate tax exemptions. Windsor sued the IRS for $363,053 in estate taxes that she paid to them because the IRS didn't recognize her and her wife as legally married for tax purposes even thought New York did.

Civil marriage is a form of a "normal contract."

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