Politics

Nancy Andrews of the Detroit Free Press Talks About Her 'Murky' Marriage Status

April 27, 2015, 3:13 PM


Nancy Andrews (LinkedIn photo)

A frustrated Nancy Andrews, a high-ranking Detroit Free Press manager, talks about her "murky" legal status in a marriage with photographer Annie O'Neill.

Andrews, now the paper's chief of innovation, joined the Freep in 2000 as director of photography and was married on a Long Island beach in New York two years ago.

In a column, she writes:

When it comes to marriage, my legal status is murky. Before I married another woman in New York in 2013, I was clearly a "single woman" who happened to want to have the right to marry another woman, but I was not "married." For two years now, I've been married -- well, sort-of married or sometimes married.

This sort-of marriage is like being sort-of pregnant. It's not possible. It's laughable at times. The only people I see benefiting from an alternating marital status might be adulterers.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on the question of same-sex marriage, specifically whether state bans on same-sex marriage are constitutional and whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states where it is legal.

Later she adds:

But what about other legal gray areas? I owned a house as "a single woman" prior to marriage and all the documents describe me as such. But am I now a "single woman?" Is that title legally clear when I go to sell it? It's a pretty big contract, dealing with a lot of money and more important, the hopes and dreams of the next family to live in the home. How should the contract be written? Am I "Nancy Andrews, a single woman"? Or am I "Nancy Andrews, a married woman"?

Perhaps one of the most important legal documents having to do with love is one's last will and testament. Murkiness here can be devastating to families. So my mother, in the last months of her life, realized that the dedicated spouses of her children could be left out. In one of her final acts of love and legality, she changed her will to specifically name my wife and my brother's wife as possible heirs. Nothing was left to chance: she listed Annie by name, not simply noting her by her "sometimes married, sometimes single" legal status. And yes, along with that legal clarity also came a true message of love and the clear establishment of family.


Read more:  Detroit Free Press


Leave a Comment:

Photo Of The Day