Marital status determines whether Americans are eligible for an enormous range of benefits, and Polikoff suggests running an inventory. She says, “Ideally, I would take every single law that makes marriage the dividing line between who’s in and who’s out of the law, ask the question: Why does this law exist? What is its purpose? What is it trying to accomplish?” Then she would adjust the law so it achieves its purpose without using marriage as the deciding factor. “And you can do that for every single law,” she says. Polikoff rattled off a long list of relevant areas of the law, including
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