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Marriage' benefits costly for gay couples
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Chicago Tribune
1/18/2010
"If Howard Wax and Robert Pooley Jr. were a heterosexual couple, they could've gone to their nearest Cook County clerk's office, paid $40 for a marriage license and been wed.
"...Instead, the couple paid $10,000 for an attorney to help them roughly simulate -- using wills, trusts and powers of attorney -- the protections that marriage affords. It was a price the men, parents of 3-year-old twins, were willing to pay for peace of mind, though they admit it's far from perfect.
"...'There are protections under the law that would help a heterosexual couple if they didn't have those protections in place,' said Christopher Clark, senior staff attorney in the Midwest Regional Office of Lambda Legal, a national gay and lesbian civil rights organization. 'A same-sex couple, without these steps, has no legal protection.'"
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