Tax Man in the Home

The Defense of Marriage Act, known by its acronym DOMA, defines marriage as between a man and a woman for the purpose of deciding who can receive a range of federal benefits.

Four federal district courts and two appeals courts have struck down the provision. The Supreme Court is going to review DOMA through the case of 83-year-old Edith Windsor, who sued to challenge a $363,000 federal estate tax bill after her partner of 44 years, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. Windsor married Spyer in 2007 after doctors told them that Spyer would not live much longer due to her multiple sclerosis. When Spyer died she left everything she had to Windsor. There is no dispute that if Windsor had been married to a man, her estate tax bill would have been zero. Hence the case.

Strangely, this debate is over the legality of one woman leaving her estate to her presumably illegal spouse instead of the far more obvious question: what right does the state have to take any one's estate or determine where it goes? 

More, when this law is overturned--which it likely will be in homage to current emotional direction--what is to prevent friends and family from marrying each other fraudulently to avoid taxation? Especially with the low childbirth rate in the U.S., a lot of estates are going to be left without obvious beneficiaries. Will a tax marriage industry emerge? Will childless widows marry sisters, childless widowers marry a childhood  friend to benefit his family?