In this issue, we talk about protecting yourself - both from harmful exposure to the sun, and from the potential legal pitfalls facing gay and lesbian families in the event of accident or death. And we give you a little bit of a refresher course about posting cruises at LezCruise, along with a recap of the cruises currently posted.

Why Plan?

If your partner ends up in a hospital while the two of you are in Greece, will you be allowed to be in her room with her? If you get ill in Mexico and are not well enough to make your own medical decisions, will your partner be allowed to make decisions for you?

It is important for everyone to plan for incapacity and death, but it is often even more important for lesbians and gay men to make sure their documents are in order as the default laws and policies often do not adequately protect our families. You can increase the chances that you could answer “yes” to questions similar to the ones posed above by having the appropriate documents in place before you travel and taking copies with you when you go.

Before You Leave

Perhaps the most important document to have in place before you travel is an Advance Directive. In this document you can appoint a health care representative to make medical decisions for you if you are unable to make the decisions for yourself. You can also give explicit instructions to health care providers about what kind of care you do and do not want in certain situations.

It is also a good idea to make sure that your finances would be taken care of should you become incapacitated or die. A Durable Power of Attorney will allow you to appoint someone to control your finances should you become incapacitated. This person would be able to access bank accounts, pay bills, and send you additional money, if necessary. Often, people who travel with their partner will draft the Durable Power of Attorney so that someone in the States could act if both you and your partner are incapacitated.

It is unlikely that you will die while traveling, but nonetheless, you should have a Will (and possibly a Trust) to ensure that, in the event of your death, your property goes to the people that you choose as opposed to the people that the State says are your closest relatives. Additionally, you should make sure that you have chosen beneficiaries for any accounts that allow you to do so. To provide yourself more reassurance, consider having a Disposal of Remains drafted. This document sets out who controls post-death decisions concerning issues such as burial or cremation, specifies your wishes concerning your remains, and can go a long way towards avoiding a family battle while coping with your grief in a foreign country.

It can be helpful to hire an attorney to assist you in preparing these documents as often there are specific requirements of what the documents must contain and how they should be phrased. It is a good idea to seek out an attorney who is familiar with the special planning needs of lesbians and gay men.

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About the Authors

Beth Allen is a Partner and Kerry Lear is a Law Clerk at Allen² Law, LLC in Portland, Oregon. Allen² Law provides legal counsel in the family law and estate planning fields in Oregon and Washington.

A Caribbean Cruise. Lounging by the pool, sunbathing on the beach, swimming and snorkeling in the turquoise water. Sounds like heaven. And yet, as we all know by now, many of those sun-related activities are actually bad for us if we don't do them right. (Isn't it a drag how everything fun is always bad for us...)

Why? Because of the ultraviolet (UV) radiation in sunlight. Here's a blurb from SunProtection.net, a website dedicated to education about sun protection issues:

"The harm caused by UV includes premature aging (such as wrinkling and age spots), skin cancer, and permanent, sometimes blinding, damage to eyes. Other medical conditions, such as lupus, can be made much worse by UV exposure. In addition, many people take drugs, such as antibiotics, antidepressants, diuretics and retinoids, that make them extremely sun sensitive." (Note to tanning divas: this includes UV exposure in tanning beds.)

So what to do? The folks at SunProtection.net say "Be AWARE". Or, more specifically:

• Avoid unprotected exposure during the peak UV hours between 10 AM and 4 PM.
• Wear sun protective clothing including a shirt, a hat with a 3-inch brim and sunglasses. If possible, stay out of direct sunlight.
• Apply broad spectrum sunscreen with SPF 30 or higher to all unprotected skin 20 minutes before going outdoors and reapply every 2 hours while in the sun.
• Routinely check for and report suspicious changes to a physician.
• Express the need for sun protection to your family and community.

You can also find the UV Index for your area and plan accordingly. The UV Index is a standard measurement of how strong the UV radiation is for a particular location at a particular time, and can help you determine what measures you need to take to protect yourself. This chart shows that you might want to take different measures in April in Panama than in April in Paris.

We learned some of these lessons the hard way on our first Caribbean cruise. We went snorkeling, and applied waterproof sunscreen before we went out. But, we forgot to reapply sunscreen and we didn't make any real effort to stay out of the sun when we weren't actually in the water - presto, sunburns for both of us, with a fairly severe one for Lis. And no more snorkeling for the rest of the cruise.

The next time, we wised up. We reapplied sunscreen, we sat in the shade as much as possible, and Lis invested in a cover shirt with sunscreen so that when we were in the water her sunburn-prone parts were still covered. We didn't get burned and got to play in the water the whole trip - as it should be.