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 Elderly Spinster Sisters Lose Bid For
Inclusion In UK Gay Partner Law
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: April 29, 2008 - 5:00 pm ET
(London) Two elderly sisters who live together
have lost their final appeal in a discrimination case that claimed they were
victims of discrimination under Britain's civil partner law.
Joyce Burden, 90, and her 82-year-old sister
Sybil (pictured) claimed that the partner law should have included any two
people living in an interdependent relationship.
By not being included in the law they claim they
could lose the their family home if either of them dies because the other could
not afford to keep the home and pay Britain's death duty tax.
The women fought their case all the way to the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
On Tuesday the court in 15-2 ruling rejected
their claim.
In arguments before the justices an attorney for
the women argued that the taxes would be unfair since unmarried same-sex couples
are exempt from the tax under the civil partnership law.
The court was told that the law breached their human rights
under the European convention.
The civil partnership law was passed in
2004. It grants same-sex couple of all of the rights and obligations of
marriage except the name.
When
the case began in 2006, Joyce Burden
said that "If we were lesbians we would have all the rights in the world. But we are
sisters, and it seems we have no rights at all."
In UK law there is a 40 percent inheritance tax
an exemption for the first $500,000. Married couples, and couples in civil
partnerships, are exempt from the tax.
The sisters’ house cost about $14,000 to build
in 1965 but was recently valued last at about $1.6 million. That would
mean the surviving sister would be required to pay nearly $600,000 in death tax.
Both women live on their social security.
The women have lost the case through the British
legal legal system, including an appeal to the House of Lords.
A panel of seven judges on the European court in
a split decision also ruled against them. The ruling by the Grand Chamber
was their last stop.
©365Gay.com 2008
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