HAPPILY EVER AFTER?: The Changing Times in Estate Planning

They’d been in love for over 20 years. They lived together. They wanted to get married. Upon the U.S. Supreme Court’s declaration that the Defense of Marriage Act provision that invalidated same-sex marriage was in fact unconstitutional (United States v. Windsor), Ohio residents John Arthur and Jim Obergefell chartered a private medical jet to Maryland to get married. John Arthur was terminally ill with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (“ALS;” aka, Lou Gehrig’s disease) and was too ill to travel more conventionally. They married in Maryland, a state that recognized same-sex marriages, and then flew back to Ohio, a state that didn’t recognize same-sex marriages.

Arthur and Obergefell filed for a temporary restraining order in an Ohio court to enjoin Ohio government officials from discriminating against same-sex marriages lawfully obtained in another state. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division, granted the motion in July 2013 and then, in December 2013, issued a declaratory judgment and permanent injunction, finding that the Ohio constitutional provision that denies recognition of a same-sex marriage legally granted in another state violates the equal protection rights of Arthur and Obergefell and any other Ohio residents who obtain valid same-sex marriage licenses in other states.

John Arthur died in October 2013 at age 47, one month before the court’s final ruling on the issue.

Obergefell v. Kasich was one of a series of lawsuits challenging state-level discrimination of same-sex marriage. Other such challenges include Glossip v. Missouri Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol Employees’ Retirement System, Kitchen v. Herbert, Bishop v. United States ex rel. Holder, and  Griego v. Oliver. For an in-depth look at these cases, as well as the latest developments in other areas of estate planning, were covered on the American Law Institute CLE’s Advanced Estate Planning Practice Update: Winter 2014 on February 7th.