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Longtime Companion Fights for Inheritance

New York Times
By Janon Fisher
Published: March 26, 2006

FROM their introduction to each other 20 years ago to the sudden death of one of them last year, Rene Price always surprised Betty Jordan.

Ms. Price and Ms. Jordan met late in life, fell in love and registered as domestic partners. But because of the vague wording in New Jersey's Domestic Partnership Act extending certain rights and benefits to gay and lesbian couples when it was passed two years ago, and a legislative clarification that came too late, Ms. Jordan could lose her partner's house, savings and two cars.

''It bothers me that they might take 20 years of my happiness -- what I have left -- and try to take it away,'' said Ms. Jordan, 66, who still lives in the house in Perth Amboy that she and Ms. Price called home. ''It makes me sad, it makes me angry.''

To hear Ms. Jordan tell it, this jolt is just the latest in a series of surprises in the relationship shared by the two women.

A mutual friend introduced Ms. Price and Ms. Jordan in May 1986. Tall and lean with a frenetic personality, Ms. Price was working as a high school physical education teacher in Brooklyn during the day and a New York City bus driver at night. Ms. Jordan sold cosmetics at the Woodbridge Center mall.

''I knew the moment I laid eyes on her there was something about Rene,'' Ms. Jordan said. ''She was just so sincere, a very caring person, an honest person.''

In 2000, Ms. Price took Ms. Jordan to see a white brick cottage in Perth Amboy, where they were already living together in an apartment across town.

Ms. Jordan said that she asked why they were there and that Ms. Price replied: ''It's yours. We're on our way to closing.''

Then, on New Year's Eve 2004, the couple registered at the Perth Amboy City Hall as domestic partners.

Ms. Price had retired from her teaching job in 2001, though she continued to drive a crosstown bus in Manhattan. On weekends, the couple would work around the house.

On July 28, 2005, as Ms. Price went through her checklist to prepare her bus for the day's shift, she collapsed and died of a heart attack at age 61.

''We loved each other, but not only that, we were in love with each other,'' she said. ''For 19 years we were in each other's lives. We breathed for each other.''

Still grieving, Ms. Jordan went about the necessary but emotionally painful work of dealing with Ms. Price's estate, which included the white brick house, the cars and a bank account with a $9,000 balance.

But when Ms. Jordan went to the Middlesex County surrogate, Kevin J. Hoagland, to clear up the estate, he listed her as ''no relation'' and refused to allow her control of the property until she posted a bond of more than $250,000 and provided a letter from Ms. Price's surviving relatives relinquishing their rights to the estate.

For their part, Ms. Price's brother and two sisters, who do not live in the area, said they recognized Ms. Jordan's right to the inheritance. ''We have no right to Rene's estate, Betty has the right to her estate,'' Mary L. Clore, one of Ms. Price's sisters, said in a telephone interview from Virginia Beach, Va. ''Me, my sister and my brother would never want to be a barrier for Betty.''

Then it seemed as if Ms. Jordan's final barrier had fallen with a legislative amendment to the Domestic Partnership Act, which Richard J. Codey, then the acting governor, signed in January in the wake of another lesbian couple's efforts to win rights through the law.

In that case, Lt. Laurel Hester, an investigator in the Ocean County prosecutor's office, who was dying of cancer, fought for and won the right for her partner to inherit her pension benefits.

Inspired by Lieutenant Hester, the Legislature approved and Mr. Codey signed into law two bills that extended the rights of domestic partners in New Jersey to include pension benefits and allowed them to be recognized as ''surviving spouses.''

This law would have resolved the problem for Ms. Jordan -- except that it was passed six months after Ms. Price died, and the Legislature made no stipulation that the new laws should be retroactive.

o even though none of Ms. Price's surviving family members claim the estate, the surrogate still cannot apply the new law to her case. ''At the time of the application there was no provision under the Domestic Partnership Act,'' Mr. Hoagland said.

At the time the act went into effect, he said, he and the 20 other county surrogates foresaw problems ahead. ''We all knew that it would be an issue,'' Mr. Hoagland said.

With no other choice left, Ms. Price hired a lawyer and filed a suit in State Superior Court in Middlesex County against Mr. Hoagland's office, contending that under a broad interpretation of the existing act, Ms. Jordan should be considered a surviving spouse. ''We believe that the Domestic Partnership Act intended this to be one of those rights,'' said her lawyer, Steven J. Hyland, who also argued that the new law should be applied retroactively.

If Ms. Jordan prevails in her suit, she will become the administrator of Ms. Price's estate, Mr. Hyland said, at the same time possibly broadening the interpretation of the Domestic Partnership Act and providing more rights for same-sex couples.

If she loses, the estate will go to Ms. Price's siblings, who have stated that they will simply let the state take it over rather than give it to Ms. Jordan, who would become saddled with an array of estate taxes.

''We've left it up to the Superior Court,'' Mr. Hoagland said.