re: #259 negativ

Imagine for a moment that you’re at work, sitting at your desk as usual or going about your daily tasks when you get a phone call. It’s the call that just about everyone dreads. On the other end is a frantic voice telling you that something awful has happened. Your spouse, your closest friend and ally in the world, whom you love more than life itself, has suddenly collapsed on the job or has been injured in a serious accident and is being rushed to the hospital.

Naturally, you drop everything and race out of the office to get to your loved one’s side. Maybe you make it in time to accompany him or her in the ambulance. Finally, you get to the hospital and follow the EMTs in to the ER as they rush the gurney down the hall. Your spouse is rushed into an examination room and while you wait outside you try get some information about what’s happening. Minutes turn to hours as your mind fills itself with all sorts of horrible scenarios. You have ample time to think the unthinkable.

A member of hospital staff tells you that because you’re not next of kin they can’t give you any information. Maybe your loved one is dying, maybe they’re already dead. But you aren’t allowed to be with them, or even to know about it. Why? Because you’re not married. You aren’t “next of kin”, and in the eyes of the law you never could be, because some people who aren’t associated with you in any way whatsoever don’t like the idea of it. You may have been with that person, exclusively, through thick and thin for 20 years, but they just flat don’t give a shit.

You won’t even be allowed to claim custody of the corpse.

But hey, that’s just the way it is, because you know, “family values” and all.

Or you’re the one who stays at home, or maybe not - but the house is in your spouse’s name. So you have to return home once your beloved dies to clear out your things, because your spouse’s closest legal relative, who never did like you, gets the house you two lived in for decades by default, and told you at the hospital that they want you outta there.