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December 13, 2007
Attorney Wins a Case on Behalf of Gay Man to Inherit Under California's Domestic Partner Law
According to: SF Attorney Drexel A. Bradshaw Successfully Represents Gay Man Against Partner's..., reuters.com, Nov. 29, 2007:
In a potentially landmark case, San Francisco Attorney Drexel A. Bradshaw has won a case on behalf of a Gay man whose rights to inherit under California's Domestic Partner Law had been challenged by the family of his deceased domestic partner. The deceased man's siblings had forced their brother to execute a new trust -- cutting out his partner of 14 years -- while the man was schizophrenic, on narcotics, and in the final stages of battling cancer. Bradshaw's successful litigation charged that the family had attempted to unlawfully overturn the man's will while he was in not in a mental state to do so.***
Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.
December 13, 2007 in New Cases, Trusts | Permalink
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Comments
I may be mistaken, but this case seems more like a standard will/trust contest than any earthshaking same-sex partners' rights case. This decedent was convinced to change his dispositive documents while: a)He lacked the testamentary capacity to do so; and/or b)He was suffering from the insane delusion that he had broken up with his partner and so disinherited him(according to the article). In either or both events, the fact that the individual disinherited was a same-sex partner is irrelevant to the issues above; particularly if the same-sex partner was a beneficiary under the decedent's prior dispositive documents (and thus a person with standing to contest). The only relevance of the California Domestic Partnership law I can see is if the individual was otherwise intestate, which is not what the article implies. However, if that is in fact the case, the right to inherit from an intestate estate as contemplated by the Domestic Partnership law would be implicated.
Of course, my knowledge base if Fla law where we don't have domestic partnership arrangements (yet?)....
Posted by: Palm Beach T&E Atty | Dec 14, 2007 4:40:38 PM
