Michael Hunter (left) with his now-deceased husband, Stephen Carter Credit: Photo courtesy of Michael Hunter

In 2005, Pennsylvania abolished common-law marriages. Critics to common-law marriages point out that they’re antiquated and made more sense in a rural society where courthouses and officials who could legally marry people were harder to access. Today, couples can walk into courthouses and get married with relative ease.

But until recently, this wasn’t the case for same-sex couples; they weren’t legally allowed to get married in Pennsylvania until 2014, and nationwide until 2015.

“We had made a decision that we were not going to get it in another state, we were going to fight for it to be legal here,” says Michael Hunter about his partnership with his spouse, Stephen Carter. The couple had been together since 1996. They bought a house together in Philadelphia, wrote each other into their wills and even proposed to each other with rings. They eventually moved to Economy Borough, in Beaver County.

Unfortunately, Carter was killed in a motorcycle crash in Schenley Park in 2013, before several critical state and federal court rulings cleared the path for legalized same-sex marriages.

This left Hunter in limbo. He and Carter lived as a married couple, but weren’t legally bound by a marriage license. So when it came time to settle Carter’s estate, Hunter was left without many spousal benefits, like the waiver of the estate tax.

Hunter decided to prove that his relationship was, in fact, a legal marriage through Pennsylvania’s common-law-marriage provision, because he and Carter had been together almost a decade before the law was abolished. The battle that ensued proved to be another example of the struggles same-sex couples endure just to access equal rights.

Hunter’s request was initially denied by a Beaver County judge in 2016. But this past April 17, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled in Hunter’s favor, granting him his constitutional right to marriage. LGBT-rights advocates say Hunter’s case proves the law is on their side. But legal experts expect battles in court, and are unsure how exactly Hunter’s case will affect more complex cases. For the immediate future, however, the marriage of Hunter and Carter opens another door in the ongoing battle for LGBT rights.

In the spring of 2016, Hunter started working through Carter’s estate. He says he knew most everything his late partner wanted.

“When he died, I didn’t have to ask anybody how to handle his funeral and his remains,” says Hunter. “There were not any real questions from me about our relationship. We considered ourselves to be spouses. Internally, in our family, we were spouses; to my siblings and his sisters and brothers, we were spouses.”

But when Hunter starting getting into managing the estate, like paying taxes and managing assets, Hunter’s lawyer, Sam Hens-Greco, believed he could prove Hunter and Carter qualified for a retroactive common-law marriage, thus providing Hunter with spousal benefits.

Hens-Greco filed the case in the Beaver County Court of Common Pleas. But in April 2016, Judge John D. McBride ruled against Hunter, writing in an opinion that Hunter and Carter only “intended” to get married and “never did carry through their statement of intent.”

According to court documents, McBride didn’t seem to be looking for a legal marriage, which was impossible to have in Pennsylvania during the tenure of Hunter and Carter’s relationship. However, the judge did want evidence of, at least, a ceremonial one. For example, McBride wrote that Hunter and Carter never “exchanged vows.” But Hens-Greco, citing five other similar cases from the Philadelphia area where Common Pleas judges ruled in favor of same-sex couples, argued the absence of a ceremony shouldn’t matter since the couple had done everything else that married couples do.

“They had 17 years of marriage, they just never had a wedding day,” says Hens-Greco. “But they did all the hard work of marriage.”

After McBride’s ruling, Hens-Greco appealed the decision up to Pennsylvania’s Superior Court. The appellate court reversed McBride’s decision, and Judge H. Geoffrey Moulton wrote in his opinion that the U.S. Constitution “mandates that same-sex couples have the same right to prove a common-law marriage as do opposite-sex couples.”

Today, all lower courts in Pennsylvania must adhere to this decision, clearing the way for same-sex couples across the state to prove they were married, even if a spouse died prior to the 2014 law allowing them to legally marry.

“For a similar case that comes in Allegheny County, Tioga County, wherever,” says Hens-Greco, “those [lower] courts are bound to find that there is a retroactive right to a same-sex common-law marriage.”

Judge McBride’s law clerk, who did not provide her name, told City Paper on April 24 that it’s not customary for judges to comment on rulings outside of their official opinions.

Of course, Hunter is happy about the decision for his own case, but is also glad that it might help same-sex couples throughout the commonwealth.

“What is said in that opinion is pretty cool, I was kinda taken aback by it,” says Hunter. “That the right to marry pre-existed the [2014] ruling. Now, there is possibility that couples could be common-law married because of their circumstance.”

Levana Layendecker, of Equality Pennsylvania, a statewide LGBT-advocacy group, is also pleased with the decision.

“Things like this ruling make a huge difference in [LGBT] lives,” says Layendecker. “The most common story we hear, for elder LGBT folks, if one partner dies and the family does not like the partner, then they take the assets. It has contributed to elder LGBT poverty.”

Still, some question why rulings like these have to go through legal obstacles in the first place. John Paul is a news blogger at the Beaver Countian, and has been with his husband for 19 years. Paul and his spouse waited to get married until it was legal, and did so in 2014.

“Our marriage day was one day, but our life together has been much longer,” says Paul. “That didn’t magically start when the courts decided our rights had not been protected up to that point.”

Paul says Hunter’s case shows just how powerful a marriage contract can be, and how the laws, even two years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage a constitutional right, are still stacked against same-sex couples. “I think a lot of heterosexual couples take advantage of that power that document gives you,” says Paul. “You can see with Judge McBride’s ruling, just how difficult that it was to prove those protections [without it].”

Judge Debbie Kunselman also serves on Beaver County’s Court of Common Pleas and has handled many LGBT cases in the county, like issuing transgender name changes and same-sex marriage licenses.

Kunselman wouldn’t comment on McBride’s ruling, but says that “judges have struggled with common-law marriage for a long time.” She believes the Superior Court’s ruling shows the importance of the appellate court system.

Kunselman believes battles like Hunter’s may become less frequent, because culture and the laws are changing in the favor of LGBT issues. “I think our society has evolved and accepted [LGBT people],” she says.

But Hens-Greco sees new same-sex marriage issues stemming from this common-law marriage decision, and future battles on the horizon. Like determining amounts of pension inheritances and divorce assets, since now there is a path for same-sex couples to prove marriage actually began before the date of legal marriage. Hens-Greco also sees more same-sex couples coming forward to prove marriages, even those who got together after the state abolished common-law marriages in 2005.

“What happens if someone has the same decision as [Hunter and Carter], but got together after 2005, but then something tragically happened before they were legally allowed to be married,” says Hens-Greco. “They are in this time warp. Are they just out of luck, because of that? If that case walked through my door, I would take it.”