Family Spotlight:
Melissa and Mindy

Melissa Schraibman and Mindy Michels, longtime Takoma Park, Md. residents, have been together for 8 1/2 years and have celebrated their relationship with a Reform Judaism ceremony. 

Melissa Schraibman, a U.S. Justice Department attorney, and Mindy Michels, coordinator of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Ally Resource Center at American University, celebrated their relationship in July 2001 with a Reform Judaism ceremony.   "It's wonderful that our faith recognizes and blesses our union," said Michels.  "That recognition is important to us, but it can't provide the legal recognition we are denied because the state of Maryland refuses to recognize us as family."

Schraibman and Michels celebrated their union with more than one hundred guests at their wedding.  Following a honeymoon trip to Panama, they traveled to Los Angeles, where Michels grew up, for a brunch - the couple's specialty - with nearly a hundred more West Coast friends, family and extended family members who couldn't make the trip to Maryland for the ceremony.

Schraibman works for the federal government, which does not offer domestic partner benefits. "I was unable to obtain a family health insurance plan and cover Mindy when she was a student," said Schraibman.  "This meant that we had to pay for medical insurance while my heterosexual colleagues got full benefits for their spouses."

"In addition, Mindy is not eligible as a survivor for purposes of Social Security or my Federal Government pension," Schraibman added.  "Even though I will pay into them for years and years and years, she is simply not eligible as a beneficiary because the government doesn't agree that she is my family."

The couple has taken great pains to draw up legal documentation to designate each other as legal next of kin.  "We want to ensure that we have hospital visitation rights, medical power of attorney, etc.," said Schraibman. "However, despite my legal training, and our extensive research, we worry that we have overlooked something, and that a hospital or court may view us as legal strangers, no matter how long we live together as life partners. It is impossible to draw up paperwork to cover literally thousands of the legal effects of marriage. Not to mention the prohibitive cost associated with the whole kit 'n kaboodle."

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