United we stand...

Walt and I have been living together since June 1, 1983 — for nearly 30 years. We met in Paris in 1981, became friends, and later became a couple after we moved back to the U.S. in 1982. Our "couplehood" has survived moves from Washington DC to California, quite a few stressful jobs and job changes, and finally a premature "retirement" and a move to France.

A friend of a friend recommended Pat as someone who
could officiate at our ceremony. She did a great job.

Last year when the state of New York passed a law instituting what is called "marriage equality," we decided to make the trip to Albany — the state capital and Walt's home town — to see if we could qualify for a marriage license. I won't go into all the details, but the fact is that we weren't absolutely sure we could get all the required documents together. Walt did much Internet research on New York State web sites so we would be prepared.

Our friends Lorraine and Evelyn, along with their husbands,
witnessed our marriage ceremony.

I guess what was really going on was that we didn't believe we would actually be able to formalize our long-time relationship and make it official. Looking back, can anyone believe that in our lifetimes couples like us would ever be able to be legally married?

Getting legally married in New York is just the first step in the long process we have set in motion. At this point, France won't recognize our marriage, so our New York union is mainly symbolic. The new French president, however, has made the institution of marriage equality for all couples a priority of his new administration.

Lorraine took pictures with Walt's camera and Evelyn
took pictures with mine during the ceremony.
Thanks to Evelyn for the pictures here.

We hope that our New York marriage will facilitate a subsequent marriage in France, which will be more than symbolic for us. The practical issues around marriage for us are inheritance laws in France and retirement pension benefits.

Today, if I suddenly died, Walt would inherit my half-interest in our house near Saint-Aignan. In 2003, we set ourselves as a corporation in France so that we would be each others' heirs. But last year we found out that as long as we remained officially unrelated business partners — that is, not married and not partners in what's called a "civil union" or, in France, a Pacs (Pacte civil de solidarité) — the one of us who survives the other will be required to pay a 60% tax on the value of the half-interest in our house that he inherits. That's not a typo — 60%.

We got married under a giant weeping cherry tree in
Washington Park in Albany NY. That's our friend
Lewis (Evelyn's husband) in the picture with us.

Before New York passed marriage equality and we decided to come here to get married, we had started looking into the possibility that two foreigners in France might be able to form a Pacs. Early on in our French residency, we had been told that as foreigners we didn't qualify. Then we found out that we in fact would be allowed to be pacsés, foreigners or not, because we are legal residents.

The process of gathering the documents required for the Pacs application seemed complicated. I went to see a government-licensed contract lawyer in Saint-Aignan — a notaire in French. She said there would be a six-month delay because the Tribunal de Grande Instance, a kind of "superior court" to which you have to apply for the Pacs, had a significant backlog of cases of all kinds. (I just read on a web forum that the French courts recently stopped making appointments for Pacs applications, and won't start again before December because it expects significant changes in the law.)

Albany city hall drew up our official marriage certificate on
the same day as the ceremony instead of making us wait
three weeks for it as other couples have to do.

The documents you need for the Pacs include your parent's birth certificates. I've already written about the complexities of obtaining birth certificates in different U.S. states. Sometimes you have to show up in person to make the application, and in other cases you can only pay by money order, and France no longer uses those. Only in person can you pay by credit card. And now we've learned that Walt will have to obtain a court order — a lengthy and expensive process — before he can get his mother's and father's certified birth certificates.

As we were researching the requirements for forming a civil union, we learned that New York would actually let us get married. Walt grew up here in Albany NY, and has friends and family here. We decided to take the plunge. And then the Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency, François Hollande, announced that he would push for marriage equality there. Both candidates said they planned, in any case, to simplify the Pacs process.

So we decided to await further developments. Meanwhile, we planned a trip to NY and got married here. It can't hurt, we figure, and now we are official somewhere, at least. I for one never imagined that this would be possible in my lifetime. And I never imagined that at the age of 63 I'd be getting married, after a 30-year "engagement." It feels pretty good.