Elizabeth Schlain Windsor, Respondent
Roberta A. Kaplan, Counsel of Record
In the early 1960s, Elizabeth Schlain Windsor and Thea Spyer met in New York City and fell in love, a romance that would last until Spyer’s death due to complications from multiple sclerosis 44 years later. On May 7, 2007, Spyer and Windsor wed in Canada, which granted marriage licenses to gay couples. When Spyer died in February 2009, she bequeathed her entire estate to Windsor. Due to Section 3 of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which mandated that the Federal Government only recognize marriages between opposite-sex couples, Windsor was required to pay $363,053 in estate taxes on…
