{"id":2429,"date":"2012-07-10T07:54:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T11:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/?p=2429"},"modified":"2015-07-15T11:50:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T15:50:00","slug":"heteronormativity-at-the-estate-planners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/2012\/07\/10\/heteronormativity-at-the-estate-planners\/","title":{"rendered":"Heteronormativity at the estate planner’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

My financial advisor has been bugging me to make a will, power of attorney, health care agent, all that sort of thing, so I finally got around to scheduling an initial consultation. At my sister's recommendation, I chose Clarke Demas and Baker,<\/a> a Vermont-based law firm, and scheduled an appointment.<\/p>\n

I received a PDF intake form for a single person, but wanted a Word document so I could make notes on it. When I received the Word intake form, I noticed that it was for married people, but I decided to use it anyway.<\/p>\n

Then I looked closely at the married intake form. It was divided into 2 columns, one labeled "Husband" and the other labeled "Wife."<\/p>\n

Outrage overcame me. [It does that a lot these days.] We've had marriage equality here in the state since 2009, but Clarke Demas and Baker apparently refuses to accept reality by simply changing their forms to read "Spouse 1" and "Spouse 2." They may have experience doing estate planning for same-sex couples, but their forms betray what they really<\/i> think of us: we don't exist.<\/p>\n

I refuse to patronize a law firm that thinks I don't exist. My business is going elsewhere, and I'm telling them why.<\/p>\n

EDIT: I just explained to the legal assistant my cancellation and my reasons. I said that they should update their forms. She said, "I apologize; we do have a form for that."<\/p>\n

Now I'm really glad I'm not using their services. My God, if the legal assistant can't even say the phrase "same-sex marriage" and if, for some reason, there's a separate form<\/i> [separate but no doubt "equal!"] for same-sex spouses, the firm clearly devalues me and my ilk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My financial advisor has been bugging me to make a will, power of attorney, health care agent, all that sort of thing, so I finally got around to scheduling an initial consultation. At my sister's recommendation, I chose Clarke Demas and Baker, a Vermont-based law firm, and scheduled an appointment. I received a PDF intake… Continue reading Heteronormativity at the estate planner’s<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[692,693,670],"class_list":["post-2429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-heteronormativity","tag-homophobia","tag-life-in-vermont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5301,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions\/5301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}