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Albany, New York, June 12, 2007
– Today, the Empire State Pride Agenda Foundation (“Pride Agenda) and
the New York City Bar Association (NYC Bar) released a report showing
that there are 1,324 New York state statutes and regulations that
confer a right or duty on married individuals in New York State. These
plus the 1,138 federal rights and responsibilities means that
government provides at least 2,462 rights and responsibilities to two
people when they marry in New York State.
“We have long known that marriage is the gateway
to a vast and vital array of legal protections and duties,” said Ross
Levi, Director of Public Policy and Education at the Pride Agenda.
“We now know in New York State that this gateway leads to 1,324 legal
rights and responsibilities, most of which cannot be obtained by any
other way but though marriage.”
“While marriage is about love and commitment, this report demonstrates
that it is also about the law,” said Allen A. Drexel, Co-Chair
of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Rights Committee of the
NYC Bar. “The benefits and duties described in this report
range from the profound to the mundane and underscore the extraordinary
breadth of marriage-related law in New York State, and how minutely
interwoven this body of law is in people’s everyday lives. Marriage
permeates state law and, in many ways, defines the day-to-day
experience of married couples in New York.”
Examples in the report of rights include NYS laws
that:
- Ensure that one spouse may not disinherit the
other, and that the surviving spouse may elect to take a share of his
or her deceased spouse’s estate against the decedent estate’s wishes
(N.Y. EST. POWERS & TRUSTS § 5-1.1-A);
- Enable spouses of military servicemembers to
attend New York community colleges at the same cost as New York
residents (N.Y. EDUC. § 6305);
- Guarantee that a child born to a married couple
shall be deemed the legitimate and natural child of the husband and
wife for all purposes, including custody, visitation and child support,
even if the child was conceived through artificial insemination by a
third party (N.Y. DOM. REL. § 73); and,
- Protect a married person from being compelled
to testify in a court proceeding about communications with his or her
spouse during marriage (N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 4502).
Examples of responsibilities include NYS laws that:
- Require a spouse to continue supporting his or
her ex-spouse, even after divorce, if without such support the
recipient spouse would be otherwise incapable of self-support and
therefore likely to become a public charge (N.Y. GEN. OBLIG. § 5-311);
- Require elected officials to file an annual
statement of financial disclosure containing information about
themselves and their spouses (N.Y. PUB. OFF. § 73-A); and,
- Bar spouses of convicted criminals from
obtaining certain types of licenses, such as a bingo operator’s license
(N.Y. GEN. MUN. § 476) or a license to sell alcoholic beverages.
While New York is the focus of this report, it is
important to note that federal law extends an equally wide safety net
of rights and responsibilities to married individuals. A similar
compendium prepared by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) in
1997 and updated in 2004 found that 1,138 federal statutes confer
rights and responsibilities to married couples.
The report entitled 1324 Reasons for Marriage
Equality in New York State is presented in three sections: an
introduction, a section cataloging 808 statutes that confer a benefit
or responsibility, and a section cataloging 516 regulations that confer
a benefit or responsibility. One section of the introduction called “A
Legal Limbo for Same-Sex Couples” discusses how same-sex couples face
legal uncertainly because only a handful of the 1,324 rights and
responsibilities have been granted to them by New York’s legislative,
judicial and executive branches or can be obtained by drawing up
contracts and other legal instruments. The introduction also profiles
three New York State families –Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd from
Buffalo, Wilhelmina Perry from New York City, and Dean DeFruscio,
Dalton Boynton and their son Spencer from Cohoes in the Capital
District – who are struggling with issues such as health care,
inheritance and child custody because they lack the ability to marry.
“We thank the NYC Bar, its LGBT Rights Committee,
and the contributing authors, researchers and editors it enlisted to
help write this report,” said Levi. “The 1,324 rights and
responsibilities of marriage detailed in this report demonstrate the
great emphasis New York rightly places on strong families. They also
painfully illustrate just how much same-sex couples and the children
they raise are hurt by the continued withholding of marriage equality.”
Click here to read 1324 Reasons for Marriage Equality in
the State of New York.
Click here to read the 1997 GAO report. Click here to read the 2004 GAO update.
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