Just me thinking outloud...

Bill thinking outloud.....

Without the benefit of marriage:
spend more on taxes, health insurance, legal bills

when your partner dies, the other has no access to survivor's benefits (pension and social security)

hefty legal bills for wills, power of attorney, etc. (straight married couples do not need these)

if one of you dies, the other one is a legal stranger

not eligible for club membership discounts (for example, the American Automobile Association offers family memberships only to legally married couples, while car rental and insurance companies charge an extra driver fee to unmarried couples)

any cash gifts between spouses are tax free, whereas an unmarried gay couple must pay tax on gifts over $10,000 per year

when one partner dies, the other can incur inheritance taxes avoided by married spouses, who inherit up to $1 million untaxed

joint ownership of property, cash and other assets is also more complex since responsibility for the taxes on each amount is unclear

in the case of divorce, you can't take advantage of tax shelters for liquidation of property that married people can

when selling a house residency requirements for the capital gains tax exemption are less stringent for married couples

even when an employer does offer domestic partnership benefits, they usually end up costing the employee more in taxes than his or her married counterpart would pay, because such benefits are treated as taxable income, whereas the federal tax code extends these benefits to married spouses as part of a worker's pre-tax income.

federal laws dictate that a large part of a pension plan must go to the surviving legal spouse, but each company decides if its employees can name a non-spouse as beneficiary.

unmarried partners cannot roll their partner's 401K (or other retirement investment plan) into their own, which means they don't get the same tax breaks as a married person.

ok... now that I've totally depressed myself, I guess I'll take a walk and reflect about how much I love being a second-class citizen in this country that I love. I hate injustice and wonder why we have so much of it built into our legal system in a country the boasts of having "justice for all".