Somebody's Getting Married!

This New Year's, there'll be plenty to celebrate: for example, the right to own real estate as community property or as community property with the right of survivorship. Wait, what?
Luckily, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Equality California are here to spell it out for us: Starting on the first day of 2005, domestic partners (or as we like to call them, "couples") will enjoy a basketfull of new rights and responsibilities in California.
Is CA the new MA? Well, almost; it ain't marriage, but it's better than nothing. The NCLR and EQCA have released a handy-dandy guide (in PDF, dammit; HTML version will be forthcoming as soon as Google spiders it) to the exciting ins and outs of queer partnership-law in the year 2005. Inheritance! Adoption! Death! Taxes! Fertility! Prison! It's all there. This is uncharted legal territory, of course, so nobody has all the answers - hence the guide's tendancy to answer some questions with "maybe" or "it depends." But what it all seems to boil down to is that couples will be guaranteed fairer treatment, which obviously means that Vital Institutions are being redefined by Activist Politicians, and that Society has been brought to the Brink of Collapse. All in a day's work!