Death And Taxes

Well this post doesn’t have anything to do with taxes, just death. When we die a death certificate is issued and it lists our gender.

California Gives Transgender People Right to Determine Sex Listed on Death CertificateKQED
By April Dembosky
June 22, 2015

In July, California will become the first state in the country to allow transgender individuals to have their gender identity listed on their death certificate.

Christopher Lee is the Bay Area man who inspired the law. Forty-eight when he died in Oakland in 2012, his friends took great care to explain to the coroner that Lee was transgender — born female, but living his entire adult life as a man. They submitted his driver’s license, which indicated Lee’s sex with a capital M.

But when the death certificate came back, Christopher was listed as Kristina. Sex: female.

“It felt like spitting on his grave,” said Lee’s close friend, Maya Scott-Chung. “When they put RIP on people’s tombstones, it’s rest in peace. And I just felt like Christopher’s spirit will not rest in peace with a death certificate that says female.”

It is the final insult for us, one we cannot fight on our own, we must count on our next of kin to do the right thing. The new California law will make that easier.

“There’s no statutory or regulatory guidance on whether sex should be listed according to the deceased’s gender identity or the anatomy,” Atkins said. “The lack of guidance can create complications when friends and family disagree about the deceased’s gender.”

Under current law, family members have the final say over how sex is noted on the death certificate. The new bill would require coroners and funeral directors to record the person’s gender identify rather than sex. And when there’s a dispute, a driver’s license or other legal document trumps family opinion.

This is something that we’re looking into here in Connecticut. There is no regulation just like in California and our legal minds said that it “should” follow the gender on the birth certificate. We will be keeping a eye out to see if it does follow the birth certificate.