Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Legal stuff for marriage
Hi everyone! This is my first post, although I've been reading over here and the knot and the bump for a while.
My girlfriend and I are getting married this fall, and we're trying to sort out what we need to do to protect all those rights we're not granted automatically. We're going to do a legal marriage in Massachusetts (I have family there, and we intend to move there within a few years), a "reaffirmation of a civil union" in New Jersey where we currently live, and the actual ceremony and reception in Minnesota where I grew up. We got in touch with a lawyer who recommended wills, living wills, powers of attorney, and temporary guardianship paperwork. Would any of you be willing to share with me which of this paperwork you bothered to do, and your views on how important it is?
The price we were quoted for all of it is about $650, which is doable, but of course there are lots of other things we'd like to spend our money on too (like the wedding and saving for the TTC headache)!
Thanks!
IVF Oct/Nov 2012
Beta #1 = 77, Beta #2 = 190, Beta #3 = 1044
Cautiously optimistic.
Re: Legal stuff for marriage
We did wills, advance medical directives, HIPPA consents (saying that medical professionals can share information with me), medical power of attorney (I can make medical decisions for her if she is unable to), and legal power of attorney (I can act on her behalf in legal/business matters.) I don't know what it all cost since it we redid everything when we did our 2nd adoption for the kids (and we had some other paperwork specifically for the kids.) We did it initially after we'd been together for about 18m and were planning our wedding.
It was EXTREMELY important to us. We didn't want her family to make decisions on her behalf on matters they knew nothing about. We'd discussed everything and as her spouse, it was important that we be viewed that way. We take our paperwork whenever we have go to the hospital or have a medical procedure done.
Here is one example
http://www.365gay.com/news/fed-court-dismisses-lesbian-hospital-lawsuit/
It SUCKS that we have to pay big bucks to do it, but the outcome of not having it could be much worse.
Welcome and happy wedding planning!
Ditto!
We did most of what 2Brides did.
We did the paperwork ourselves and just had everything notarized. We used a fill-in kind of form. Not ideal, but we feel better having something.
We have not done wills yet but will if we get to adopt our foster children.
It's so important to have these protections in place. Good luck and congratulations! :-)
We did wills, advance medical directives, durable medical power of attorney, legal power of attorney and a partnership agreement. We executed them all when we moved in together--except the partnership agreement, which we incorporated into our wedding ceremony.
These were all very important to us. We intend to work with an estate planner sometime soon to make sure we (and the baby) are as covered as we can be considering where we live.
BTW, what part of Minnesota? We got married in Golden Valley and loved our venue, caterer, band, etc...