What Happens Without a Plan
If you die without a will in the United States, your state’s intestacy laws determine who inherits your assets. The order typically goes: spouse, children, parents, siblings, extended family. In no state do intestacy laws recognize a long-term partner who isn’t legally married. They do not recognize chosen family. They do not recognize the person you’ve built a life with for twenty years if there is no legal document establishing that relationship.
For unmarried LGBTQ+ couples — which includes a significant portion of the community, whether by choice, circumstance, or the ongoing patchwork of legal recognition — dying without a will means your partner may inherit nothing. Your assets go to biological family, who may be estranged, hostile, or simply not the people you intended to provide for.
For married couples, the situation is better but not complete. A spouse inherits under intestacy in most states, but that protection doesn’t extend to other people you love and want to provide for. And it doesn’t cover the medical and legal decisions that may need to be made while you are alive but incapacitated — which requires different documents entirely.
The gap is not hypothetical. LGBTQ+ people have had partners turned away from hospital rooms. Have had homes contested by biological family after a death. Have had assets frozen, accounts inaccessible, arrangements unrecognized — not because the law was necessarily against them, but because the right documents were never in place.
The Documents That Actually Protect Your Relationship
A comprehensive estate plan for an LGBTQ+ individual or couple includes everything a heterosexual couple needs — plus careful attention to the specific vulnerabilities that remain even after legal progress.
A will. The foundation. Names your beneficiaries, names your executor, expresses your wishes. Without it, the state decides. With it, you decide.
A revocable living trust. For most couples with any significant assets — a home, retirement accounts, business interests — a trust provides privacy, avoids probate, and allows assets to transfer directly to your named beneficiaries without court involvement. It is also more difficult to contest than a will.
Healthcare directives and a medical power of attorney. This is where the gap is most acute and most consequential. A healthcare directive (also called a living will or advance directive) documents your medical wishes if you are incapacitated. A medical power of attorney names the person authorized to make medical decisions on your behalf.
Without these documents, hospitals and medical providers default to next of kin — typically biological family. For LGBTQ+ individuals whose biological family may not know their partner, may not accept their relationship, or may be actively hostile to it, this is not a technicality. It is a crisis waiting to happen.
With these documents, your partner has legal standing to be in the room, make decisions, and advocate for you. Without them, they may not.
A financial power of attorney. Names the person authorized to manage your financial affairs if you are unable to do so — pay bills, manage accounts, handle business matters. Without this, your partner has no legal authority over joint finances that may be held in your name alone.
Beneficiary designations. Life insurance, retirement accounts, and bank accounts all transfer by beneficiary designation, not by will. Make sure every account names the right person. An outdated beneficiary designation overrides your will — and the wrong name on a 401(k) can send your retirement savings somewhere you never intended.
The Political Reality: Why the Urgency Is Real Right Now
Estate planning is always urgent. For LGBTQ+ individuals, it is especially urgent in this particular political moment.
The legal landscape is less stable than it appeared in 2015. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned a right once considered settled, demonstrated that long-standing constitutional protections can be revisited. Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion explicitly named Obergefell as a decision that deserved reconsideration.
The Respect for Marriage Act, signed in 2022, provides some federal backstop protection for same-sex marriages — requiring federal recognition and preventing states from refusing to recognize marriages performed in other states. It does not guarantee that a future Supreme Court ruling couldn’t affect state-level marriage recognition.
This is not a political opinion. It is a legal observation about a landscape that has changed before and may change again. And the response to legal instability is legal preparation.
The more documents you have properly executed — the will, the trust, the healthcare directive, the power of attorney, the beneficiary designations — the more your wishes are codified in a form that is enforceable regardless of what happens to broader legal protections. You are not waiting on the law to protect you. You are building your own protection.
That is precisely what estate planning does.
A Note on Trans-Specific Planning
For transgender individuals, estate planning carries an additional layer of complexity that deserves direct attention.
Name and gender marker changes, when made legally, should be reflected consistently across all estate planning documents. Mismatched documents — a will in a deadname while financial accounts are in a legal name, or vice versa — can create delays, confusion, and legal challenges at exactly the moment your family can least afford them.
Work with an estate planning attorney familiar with trans-specific issues to ensure your documents are consistent, current, and clearly identify you across all records. If you have changed your name or gender marker, update your documents.
Additionally, if you have biological children from a prior relationship and are in a different gender expression now, guardianship designations and parental rights documentation should be reviewed to ensure they reflect your current legal identity.
The Bottom Line
Marriage equality was a landmark. It was not a finish line.
The law, even at its most protective, does not automatically do what your documents can do. It does not name your partner your medical decision-maker. It does not ensure your assets reach your chosen family. It does not protect your relationship in a hospital room at 3 AM when someone needs legal authority to act.
Your estate plan does.
At The House, we believe that every family — in every configuration, every relationship structure, every community — deserves the legal protection to make their intentions enforceable. If you haven’t yet built that protection, this is where you start.
I love you to Life, Family! 🌻
LA🌻🖤✊🏾
Lisa Ann Mason | Legacy Architect & Generational Wealth Strategist
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