This Could Happen to You

Annie Liebovitz in front of one of her most famous photographs

Another reason marriage matters: let's say you finally do find your soulmate and settle down in that cozy little house/condo/cottage/doublewide/whatever, to live happily ever after, with the dogs and the picket fence and the plaster cupids, etc. And then one day when you get to the end of ever-after, he dies.

If the house is in his name, you better start packing your bags pronto, buster. You don't own it; his snarky relatives do. Oh they may be nice as pie right now while he's alive, they may fawn over you and proclaim loudly every chance they get how much they love you; but watch out for the knives as soon as he's gone. Trust me, I know.

Even if the house is in both your names, you're still on very shaky ground: it's not the relatives you have to worry about in that case, it's the IRS. You will have to pay up to FIFTY PERCENT of his share of the value in taxes. Yup. Even though your name is on it too.

Why? Because you aren't his widower; you guys were never legally married in the eyes of the law. You have no more rights than a stranger. Even if he left his share to you in a will, you still have to pay.

Stop and do the math: if it happened today, where would you get the cash to give the taxman? Or would you have to sell your home and slink away like a homeless person? Suppose it didn't sell for what you paid, or for what your equity is, or suppose you couldn't sell it for any price, as in today's market: what would you do?

The IRS is going to get what you owe them, of course; they can garnish your wages if need be. Or other financially devastating things.

That's why marriage matters. As it seems legendary photographer Annie Liebovitz has discovered. Granted, she's in a much higher financial bracket than most of us will ever be. But the principle is the same.

If you aren't married, then when one of you dies, the other one is crap in the eyes of the law. You have no rights to anything that was your partner's. Believe it.

From AfterEllen:

Out Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz recently took out a loan against her prized photographs in order to pay off her outstanding mortgage debt. Miss Leibovitz is not alone in suffering from the global economic crisis, but what struck me about her story was that most of her financial woes stemmed from her inheritance of her long time partner, Susan Sontag’s, estate.

As Suze Orman pointed out in her Valentine’s Day wish for gay marriage, same-sex couples do not have the same privileges as straight married couples when it comes to inheritance. If your partner passes away and leaves her estate to you, you have to pay up to 50 percent of the value of your inheritance in taxes. However, if you and your partner were recognized as a married couple, you wouldn’t have to pay a dime. And it is precisely this unjust double standard that got Annie Leibovitz into financial trouble.

When Sontag died in 2004, she bequeathed several properties to Leibovitz, who was forced to pony up half of their value to keep them. Yes, she makes a nice chunk of change from Vanity Fair, and yes, she probably could have just sold the properties when the market was good in 2004, but that’s not really the point. The point is she should never have been in the position of paying or selling to not pay as much in the first place. Her wealth and poor decision-making are incidental.