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New York Gay Widow Fights for Estate-Tax Refund After 40-Year Union
At 81, Edith Windsor at Center of Fight About Defense of Marriage Act
Edith “Edie” Windsor is the human face behind one of 12 pending lawsuits that challenge the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal court. She’s also the first target of the new high-powered private attorney hired by House Republicans to uphold the law.
The New York woman, 81, sued the federal government last year, demanding recognition of her marriage to her late spouse, Thea Spyer, and the same rights and privileges afforded to heterosexual couples. The two exchanged vows in Toronto, Canada, in 2007 after spending 40 years together.
“If you live together for 42 years and you love each other all those years and take care of each other all those years, how could marriage be different? It turns out it’s different and you don’t know why,” Windsor said in a video statement. “It has to do with our dignity altogether, our dignity as human beings.” But after two joyful years officially married — a union recognized by their home state of New York — Windsor was effectively slapped in the face by the federal government when Spyer passed away in 2009, she said.
“The federal government taxed what I inherited from Thea as though we were strangers rather than spouses,” she said of DOMA, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, in November. “The law effectively imposes a tax on being gay.”
Windsor was forced to pay more than $363,000 in estate taxes, which are not incurred by married heterosexual spouses upon death.
