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I know that Legal Aid gives health and other benefits to gay registered domestic partners. Not sure whether they were registered and how far those benefits extend. As far as life insurance, you could choose whoever you wanted as the beneficiary.

So true, Alb. I wonder if her surviving partner is being denied insurance or retirement benefits because she was not legally married.

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I don't know these folks and have no idea about what they thought about the idea of marriage. But, if they did want to be married, I think it's very unfair that these women did not have the option to be married.

There is just something very unfair about a bunch of religious fanatics telling a woman who's dying of cancer after living with her partner for three decades that her marrying her partner would somehow cause the social order to collapse.

Sure. As if the healthy one comforting her beloved through her final days emitted a secret signal that will cause all of the hetero couples with children within two miles to file for divorce....

Thank you for posting this. I admired Michele and had the honor of working with her. I knew she passed after a difficult battle, but hadn't seen the obit yet.

Thank you.

Michele Maxian led a legal fight over the city's arrest and detainment methods during the National Republican Convention -- forced New York City to pay $150 a person in a G.O.P. arrest settlement.

http://www.nlgnyc.org/rnc/contemptarticle1.htm

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New York Daily News
Legal Aid big Maxian dead at 55

Michele Maxian, champion of the Legal Aid Society's fight for the right to an arraignment within 24 hours of arrest, died last Tuesday of ovarian cancer. She was 55.

Maxian, a graduate of Douglass College and Rutgers University Law School, spent her entire career at Legal Aid and played lead roles in the criminal defense and special litigation divisions.

She also challenged the lengthy detainment of protesters arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in Manhattan.

"This is a tremendous loss for all of us at the Legal Aid Society and for the broader community," said Steven Banks, the society's attorney-in-chief. "But Michele's life's work of protecting the rights of poor New Yorkers will live on."

Maxian is survived by her partner of 32 years, Marianne Ardito; a brother, Richard Maxian, and his wife, Judy, of Suwanee, Ga.; a nephew, Richard Maxian Jr., and two nieces, Mary Knight and Cyndi Bennett.

Funeral services were held Friday in Jersey City. Donations may be made in Maxian's memory to the oncology unit of St. Mary's Foundation, 1 McWilliams Place, Jersey City, N.J. 07302, and to YAI National Institute for People with Disabilities of New York City.

Originally published on November 19, 2006