Edie Windsor, 87, and Judith] Kasen, 51. has Gay Marriage

choi

Jacob Bernstein, The Remarriage of a Gay Marriage Pioneer; Edie Windsor, LGBT activist, is a key figure in the marriage equality movement. New York Times, Oct 6, 2016 (in the Thursday Style section).
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/3 ... ivist-marriage.html

Note:
(a) "In 2007, Ms [Edie] Windsor (then 77) and her first spouse, Thea Spyer (then 75), went to Toronto, where gay marriage was legal, and wed.  At the time, Ms Spyer was sick with multiple sclerosis [a neurological disorder, whose cause might be autoimmune].  Two years later she died, and Ms Windsor, the sole heir of Ms Spyer's estate, was hit with a tax bill of $363,000. Ms Windsor would not have faced the taxes if she had been married to a man. The IRS refused her claim that she was entitled to an exemption, and Ms Windsor sued for a refund with her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.  The case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, which in 2013 issued a 5-4 decision declaring Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional."
(i) The surname is from Windsor, Berkshire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor,_Berkshire
(The town is situated 23 miles (37 km) west of Charing Cross, London; The name originates from old English Windles-ore, or 'winch by the riverside')
(ii) Edith Windsor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Windsor
(1929- ; birth name Edith Schlain; married Saul Windsor and divorced a year later; "Thea Spyer, a psychologist")
(iii) United States v Windsor (2013) 570 US ___
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_6j37.pdf

slip opinion at page 3:

"Spyer died in February 2009, and left her entire estate to Windsor. Because DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act; a federal law enacted in 1996] denies federal recognition to same-sex spouses, Windsor did not qualify for the marital exemption from the federal estate tax, which excludes from taxation 'any interest in property which passes or has passed from the decedent to his surviving spouse.' 26 U. S. C. §2056(a). Windsor paid $363,053 in estate taxes and sought a refund. The Internal Revenue Service denied the refund, concluding that, under DOMA, Windsor was not a 'surviving spouse.' Windsor commenced this refund suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York [ie, Manhattan]. She contended that DOMA violates the guarantee of equal protection, as applied to the Federal Government through the Fifth Amendment [Supreme Court agreed]."

There is no need to read the rest.
(iv) Analysis: Death, taxes and Supreme Court's gay Marriage Case. Reuters, Mar 13, 2013
www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-c ... USBRE92B06K20130312
("When Spyer died in 2009, Windsor inherited her spouse's estate, worth about $4.1 million, according to lawyers")

This report was filed more than three months before United States Supreme Court decided United States v Windsor (released on June 26, 2013).

(b) "At a number of gay rights events * * * Ms [Judith] Kasen[, a vice president at Wells Fargo Advisors,] walked up to Ms Windsor and tried to flirt. * * * Nothing came of it.  But Ms Kasen, now 51, persisted. In November 2015, Ms Windsor, now 87, agreed to let Ms. Kasen walk her home from a benefit.  A week later, they went on their first date"