On Monday, a federal judge in Philadelphia ruled that the lesbian spouse, rather than the parents, of a deceased city lawyer would receive the lawyer’s $49,000 proceeds of her firm’s profit-sharing plan. Our Galveston personal injury attorneys note that the lesbian couple had wed in Canada, which issues marriage licenses for same-sex couples. They lived in Illinois; and the attorney’s law firm was based in Pennsylvania.
The deceased lawyer’s parents had not approved of her relationship or marriage and had sued to receive the proceeds of the profit-sharing plan. But last month, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned key provisions of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), invalidating the federal law designed to put obstacles in the way of equal rights for same-sex married couples.
The federal judge ruled that Jennifer Tobits was Sarah Ellyn Farley’s “surviving spouse” under the terms of the profit-sharing plan following the Supreme Court’s decision. The federal judge avoided possibly sticky questions of state law by stating that state law was “only applicable to the extent it is not preempted by” federal law. And federal ERISA laws, which governed the profit-sharing plan, therefore pre-empted state laws in that matter. (Source: Joseph A. Slobodzian, phillynews.com, Philly.com, 7/29/13)
Of course, until state laws uniformly recognize equal rights for married same-sex couples, our Galveston personal injury attorneys point out that gay and lesbian spouses will still need to engage in the thorough and creative estate planning measures they’ve been relying on for decades. And they might still expect to litigate in the face of recalcitrant relatives.
This decision by a federal judge in Philadelphia is but another small step in bringing the law and its application into line with reality. But the Galveston personal injury attorneys at Denena Points, PC emphasize that the judge’s ruling does provide a ray of hope that same-sex spouses who have a valid marriage might receive the financial compensation and other benefits and proceeds to which they’re justly entitled after a partner’s tragic death. Where federal law governs cases, such as with Jones Act claims, same-sex spouses now might find a slightly easier road to the financial recovery they deserve after their tragic loss of a loved one. Click the link to read more about Jones Act claims.