Vorkosigan

<a href="http://www.ev1.net/english/news/newsarticle.asp?articleID=15559826&subject=headlin es" target="_blank">Another blow against the family.</a>

Michael

bonduca

A blow against a man's right to leave his property to his wife. In short, it blows.

ohwilleke

Why didn't that damn fool spend $300 and write a Will?

HeatherD

I've wondered about that as well but I don't know a lot about the law in that area.

Would a proper Will be legally the same as a marriage? I sure the husband could leave the estate to his wife but are there differences.

There was a similar case in Texas not long ago. In that case though it wasn't the estate that was the problem. A Will would not have changed the outcome.

In that case the wife lost her husband (apparently) to a case of malpractice from a surgeon. The surgeon's defense team claimed that she had no right to sue for malpractice because her marriage wasn't valid. They made this claim because she was born male. The Texas court sided with the defense, her marriage was invalidated in Texas (but not in Kansas where she legally married), and she couldn't sue the doctor that (allegedly) was responsible.

I think the Texas court decided that because her birth certificate said male that they could assume that she had XY chromosomes. Therefore she had to be legally male.

This of course could backfire. There are a number of people that are born intersexed and some just have abnormal sex chromosomes. You might be reading this thinking you are a normal male and yet have XX, XXY, XYY or XO sex chromosomes.

What sex are you then legally? Is it your outward appearance that matters, your chromosomes, or your birth certificate?

What happens if someone wants to legally invalidate your marriage or inheritance? It could happen to you.

It's also happening in the professional sports arena, good athletes who have grown up believing they were normal males or females are having to submit to mandatory genetic testing. In some cases genetic abnormalities have disqualified these individuals and many times destroyed careers.