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UK spinster sisters denied gay-couple rights

by Rex Wockner

International News

The European Court of Human Rights ruled 15-2 on April 29 that two elderly sisters in England who never married, and lived together their whole lives, have no right to the inheritance-tax exemption granted to civilly partnered same-sex couples.
Joyce Burden, 90, and Sybil Burden, 82, say this means that when one of them dies, the other will have to sell the family home to pay approximately $460,000 in inheritance taxes.
Married couples, as well as same-sex couples who enter a civil partnership, are exempt from inheritance tax, but other inheritors are taxed at 40 percent of the value of the home that exceeds $600,000. The sisters' home has grown in value to $1,750,000.
The sisters have argued that the tax law is "unfair" and makes them "second-class citizens."

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