Book description
Protect your rights -- protect your relationship!
Now more than ever, it's important that you take the proper legal steps
to define and protect your relationship in the eyes of the law. If you
don't, you run the risk of being shut out of each other's lives -- and
the lives of children you co-parent -- in times of medical, financial or
personal crisis.
This practical, plain-English guide shows lesbian and gay couples how
to:
make practical decisions about living together
obtain domestic partner benefits
make medical decisions for each other when needed
take care of each other's finances when one partner is incapacitated
leave property to each other
have and raise children through adoption, donor insemination, surrogacy
or foster parenting
The 15th edition is updated with a discussion of the laws of each state
offering either marriage or marriage-equivalent status, covers all the
new state laws in recent months, and discusses the pros and cons of
entering into a marriage or like relationship. It also includes a CD-ROM
that helps living-together contracts, powers of attorney, wills and
more. Denis Clifford
, a graduate of Columbia Law School, where he was an editor of The Law
Review, is a lawyer who specializes in estate planning. He is the author
of many Nolo titles including Quick and Legal Will Book, Nolo's Simple
Will Book and Make Your Own Living Trust and co-author of Plan Your
Estate and A Legal Guide for Lesbian and Gay Couples. He has been
interviewed by such major media as The New York Times, Los Angeles
Times, and Money Magazine. Frederick Hertz
is a practicing attorney-mediator and the author of Legal Affairs:
Essential Advice for Same-Sex Couples (Owl Books) and co-author of
Nolo's Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples and A Legal
Guide for Lesbian & Gay Couples. He lives and works in Oakland,
California. Doskow
is a practicing attorney and mediator who has worked with families in
the Bay Area for more than 15 years. She is the author of Nolo's
Essential Guide to Divorce and the editor of many Nolo titles including
Divorce Without Court: A Guide to Mediation and Collaborative Divorce
and the bestselling Neighbor Law: Fences, Trees Boundaries & Noise.
She specializes in family law, including adoption, parentage issues,
domestic partnership formation and dissolution, and divorce. She is a
graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California
at Berkeley.
