This story has been going around some of the feminist and LGBTQ blogs today. The New York Times article talks about two different families that were kept apart while one partner was in the hospital. Both were legally prepared for the eventuality and were still kept apart.

Ms. Langbehn says that a hospital social worker informed her that she was in an “antigay city and state” and that she would need a health care proxy to get information. (The worker denies having made the statement, Mr. Alonso said.) As the social worker turned to leave, Ms. Langbehn stopped him. “I said: ‘Wait a minute. I have those health care proxies,’ ” she said. She called a friend to fax the papers.

The medical chart shows that the documents arrived around 4:15 p.m., but nobody immediately spoke to Ms. Langbehn about Ms. Pond’s condition. During her eight-hour stay in the trauma unit waiting room, Ms. Langbehn says, she had two brief encounters with doctors. Around 5:20 a doctor sought her consent for a “brain monitor” but offered no update about the patient’s condition. Around 6:20, two doctors told her there was no hope for a recovery.

Despite repeated requests to see her partner, Ms. Langbehn says she was given just one five-minute visit, when a priest administered last rites. She says she continued to plead with a hospital worker that the children be allowed to see their mother, even showing the children’s birth certificates.

“I said to the receptionist, ‘Look, they’re her kids,’ ” Ms. Langbehn said. (Mr. Alonso, the hospital spokesman, says that except in special circumstances, children under 14 are not allowed to visit in the trauma unit.)

by Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller

Although these books examine the ins and outs of cohabitation from different viewpoints, they do agree on some basics: cohabitation is on the rise (there are 11 million cohabitors in this country today, claim Solot and Miller), and six out of ten couples live together before marriage (claim the Whitmans). Strangely enough, not many self-help manuals on the subject exist. Founders of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, Solot and Miller are a committed unmarried couple, and their book reflects this perspective. Although they acknowledge that many couples live together as a step before marriage, they are most concerned with couples who are planning to live together instead of getting married. They cover topics such as reasons why couples would decide not to get married, how unmarried couples can legally protect themselves, and how to agitate for acceptance of unmarried lifestyles. Stacy Whitman, a journalist currently living with her fiance , and her sister, lawyer Wynne Whitman, have a different focus. While they recognize that some couples might decide to live together ad infinitum, their advice pertains to couples for whom the wedding bells will eventually toll. They address many of the same areas as Solot and Miller, such as legal protection and how to deal with negative reactions from family and friends, but they also include advice on what to do if one member is not willing to tie the knot. Given the dearth of books on cohabitation, either of these would make great additions to public libraries. Also consider Ralph Warner and others' Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples, endorsed by the authors here.

In our June meeting we will be discussing how to protect and provide for your poly family with contract law. We will have a guest speaker talking to us about things like wills and estates; also, we will be going over the chapters regarding the law in Tristan Taormino's book Opening Up and discussing Relationship LLC.

In preparation for all of this, we would like to collect as many questions as possible regarding the subject to send to our guest speaker so he can be prepared when he comes.

Leave your questions in the comments and we will forward them on to him.

Thanks!

Relationship LLC (RLLC™) is a mark we created to refer to limited liability companies created by people who generally are not married but who want a legally recognized relationship between them. A relationship which would be a legal entity that could buy property, provide health insurance to its members, obtain credit cards, serve as the couple's consulting company (Put Your Relationship LLC To Work), lease a car, file a tax return as a partnership and in general, engage in any legitimate business. Delaware Law also permits one person to create a LLC, i.e., single member LLCs. It is logical to expect that a group or a family would form a Posse LLC (tm) to further the collective welfare and interests of the group. Posse LLC is the mark we created to refer to social and professional associations formalized under LLC law.

If it is your dream to live in a polyamorous family and you understand that people are human with human problems, needs, hopes, dreams and fears, you've come to the right place. We have Julie Jacob, Goddess of Giggle, with her comic Spice! to present a humorous view of a fictional poly family, Noël Lynne Figart, the Goddess of Java and The Polyamorous Misanthrope to rant, rave and edify, and even occasionally you'll find her columns aren't all that misanthropic, after all. We have stories about polyamorous households, advice on saving money, and help to find the legal arrangements you need to make your family dream a reality.