243. ROLLOVER AND PLAY DEAD

From the Archives. (August 2006) Yahoo! headlines are bizarre today. Besides the never-ending updates about the arrest of a skinny teacher who confesses to raping and killing JonBenet Ramsey—and could someone tell me how anyone can rape a six year old yet claim to love her?—there’s Breast implants linked to suicide, not cancer.

I could have told them that augmenting your body to suit cultural whims doesn’t buy happiness.

Then there’s the pathetic How much Paris Hilton is too much? (which, incidentally, manages to give us even more Paris Hilton).

The good news, of course, is that a judge called a halt to Bush&Co’s illegal wiretapping program.

But an even bigger headline, if you’re LGBT—and one that will never make Yahoo!’s headlines—is that Bush signed the Pension Protection Act into law today.

One special right that this country has long extended exclusively to heterosexual couples is the right to rollover retirement plans when a partner dies. Before today though, surviving LGBT partners were forced to withdraw the lump sum and then pay major penalties.

Now the non-spousal rollover provision extends the same right to “spousal equivalents.”

Another special right that has long been extended exclusively to heterosexual couples is the right to withdraw funds from your partner’s retirement fund if you’re faced with medical or financial emergencies.

Example: say my partner, Homo Schiavo, has 300 thousand dollars in a 401(k) and is in a horrible accident that has left her in a coma and she remains in a coma for years while I am left to pay the mortgage plus all those medical bills alone.

Well, now I can withdraw these funds from her retirement account to help cover her medical expenses.

That one is covered in the Hardship Distribution provision.

Not much else to report, but that’s good enough news for now.