alto, everything you write resonates with me, from the incomprehensible levels of loss I experienced when my partner passed away, to the lack of legal protection due to our not being legally married.

We were registered as domestic partners, and Lenny had retained an attorney who specialized in these matters, but I still ended up losing our apartment. The details are complicated, but the long and short is that as Lenny’s executor, I had to sell the apartment back to the CoOp for a tiny fraction of what it was worth.

If we’d been married, which we couldn’t be, I would have inherited it automatically, no questions asked.

And this was in New York City, where every member of the CoOp board would have described themselves as liberal and progressive.

Marriage matters.

Jim