Court Opinion

ID: 9849864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:47:55.556292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:27.434134
License: Public Domain

Sears-Collins, Justice,
concurring.
Alimony is based on an ex-spouse’s need, and if in reality that need decreases, alimony probably should be reduced or even terminated. Logically, it should make no difference whether the ex-spouse has remarried, is living in a meretricious relationship with a person of the opposite sex or is living with a gay partner. In a perfect world it ought to be the financial reality that counts.
But this is not yet a perfect world. While the relationships of married couples are clearly defined by law, lesbian and gay couples in America today cannot legally marry, no matter how deep their love and how firm their commitment. Thus, unlike those couples of the opposite sex who live together but are not married, they are forever denied the numerous legal rights that come with marriage. These rights include the right to: a) file joint income tax returns; b) create a marital life estate trust; c) claim estate tax marital deductions; d) claim family partnership tax income; e) recover damages based on injury to a partner; f) receive survivor’s benefits; g) enter hospitals, jails and other places restricted to “immediate family”; h) live in neighbor*723hoods zoned “family only”; i) obtain “family” health insurance, dental insurance, bereavement leave and other employment benefits; j) collect unemployment benefits if they quit their job to move with their partner to a new location because he or she has obtained a new job; k) get residency status for a noncitizen partner to avoid deportation; 1) automatically make medical decisions in the event a partner is injured or incapacitated; m) and automatically inherit a partner’s property in the event he or she dies without a will. Many of the other legal consequences of gay “coupling” are not so immediately apparent, but surface only at times of stress — misunderstandings, separation and death.1
Decided February 8, 1993.
Frankel, Hardwick, Tanenbaum, & Fink, Martha J. Kuckleburg, for appellant.
Winburn, Lewis & Barrow, Gene Mac Winburn, John J. Barrow, Albert M. Pearson III, for appellee.
In view of the foregoing, it is clear that the law does not encourage permanent gay “coupling” arrangements by providing them either the same acceptance and support or the same governmental, legal or social service benefits or the many tax and other economic benefits accorded married couples.
It would not be fair to expand OCGA § 19-6-19 through judicial interpretation so as to saddle gay and lesbian couples with a penalty accorded unwed heterosexual couples who live together who have the choice of taking advantage of the benefits of marriage without according homosexual couples who live together the benefits of a relationship that for them can never happen under the law. To do so would only appear to be fair. In truth and in practice, however, it would not be fair at all.

 H. Curry and D. Clifford, A Legal Guide for Lesbian and Gay Couples 1:2 (1991).