Same-Sex Legal Kit for Dummies

Elisa and Carrie

Carrie Ross-Stone and her partner, Elisia — whose cross-country bike ride was documented in the 2005 film Lesbian Grandmothers From Mars: One Couple’s Journey for Marriage Equality — have run Rainbow Law for two decades now. Rainbow Law offers info on LGBTQ legal protections and estate planning, and, in the last four years, free advance directives (living wills and medical and durable powers of attorney) to anyone who requests them.  

It’s no surprise, then, to see that Ross-Stone, a West Virginia attorney, partnered with Widener University School of Law professor John G. Culhane to write Same-Sex Legal Kit for Dummies (Wiley, $34.99), a compilation of legal information every LGBT person, whether single or partnered, needs to know. The book comes with a CD containing sample forms for such documents as tenant agreements, living wills, co-parenting agreements, and medical powers of attorney. The disc also has state-by-state lists of marriage recognition laws, adoption and surrogacy laws, and more.