Other considerations aside, same-sex couples not yet wed have to decide now whether doing so would help or hurt them financially. Figuring out the right answer could require a detailed analysis of their tax situation and property holdings.
The upside: Married same-sex couples should be able to tap federal benefits including spousal Social Security, pensions and rollovers of individual retirement accounts and 401(k)s—along with dividing those assets in divorce without an extra tax bill. Marital status is a factor in more than 1,100 federal benefits, according to one count.
Steve Branton, a San Francisco financial planner, says he is looking forward to telling one couple he works with that the change in the law has boosted their odds of having a sustainable income throughout retirement by 10%.
"Now I can say, 'You guys have a much better outlook,' so they may feel better about saying they can retire next year rather than in five years," Mr. Branton says.
But having to file joint tax returns as a married couple could cost some families thousands of dollars a year, depending on their income and deductions. And if one spouse needs long-term care, the other could wind up paying for it, rather than the patient qualifying for Medicaid assistance, says Kyle Young, a financial adviser in Short Hills, N.J.
The outlook is further clouded by the uncertainty in many places as to whether such unions will count: Most state governments still haven't legalized same-sex marriage. And even though the court on Wednesday struck down the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which denied federal benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples, individual states so far aren't required to sanction such marriages.
For same-sex couples in states where gay marriage remains illegal, the striking of the federal prohibition means they will continue to follow two sets of rules, especially when dealing with their finances.
"We're having the whether-to-wed conversation with clients more these days," says Scott Squillace, an estate-planning lawyer in Boston who works with many same-sex couples.
The Supreme Court's ruling "removes from the books an egregiously bad law. But other than that, it doesn't help me," says Robert Nead, a 67-year-old retired American Express AXP -0.48% executive who married his partner, an advertising art director, in 2004 in Massachusetts. Although their careers were in New York and they still own an apartment there, they have retired to Pennsylvania, where their marriage isn't legally recognized.
So far, only 12 states—Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, along with Washington, D.C.—now issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples or plan to do so soon.
California did so for part of 2008, and the Supreme Court's refusal to rule on that state's Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage could clear the way for the state to resume same-sex marriages.
About 114,100 same-sex couples are legally married, according to a U.S. Census analysis by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law.
Many other states allow civil unions among same-sex couples or grant some state-level spousal rights through domestic partnerships, with about 108,600 same-sex couples in them in all.
Legal experts are trying to figure out whether such couples can tap federal benefits without getting married. Another 407,300 same-sex couples are in no union whatsoever, according to the Census analysis.
With so many changes in the offing, here are some strategies that same-sex couples should consider.
Prepare for trickier tax returns.
Same-sex married couples could now be hit with the so-called marriage penalty on their federal income taxes, particularly double-income couples with good incomes who make roughly the same amount.
Janis Cowhey McDonagh, a partner at accounting firm Marcum in New York, works with two men who make a lot of money and have no children. "They save a lot by filing single," and typically file their return later in the year, she says. "But we ran their return this year and said, 'You need to file before the end of June, because the option to file single may go away at the end of the month.' "
Still, for couples in which one spouse has a much bigger paycheck than the other, filing jointly could result in savings. That is because the tax brackets for filing jointly are higher than for single taxpayers, meaning a larger portion of income is likely to be in a lower tax bracket than would have been the case if the higher-income earner filed as an individual, says Mark Luscombe, an analyst at tax publisher CCH, a unit of Wolters Kluwer WTKWY +0.76% .
In another same-sex married couple with whom Ms. McDonagh works, one spouse makes more than $1 million a year, which is significantly more than the other.
They usually file their return by April 15. But this year, they filed an extension for their 2012 return. Now that they can file jointly, they should save $95,000 in income tax, she says.
Same-sex couples who married years ago also could benefit from amending past returns, which is allowed for the previous three years, says Nicole Pearl, a lawyer and partner in McDermott Will & Emery's private-client group in Los Angeles. Amending is optional, meaning it only makes sense if a couple could recoup tax they had paid previously.
One caveat: There is a chance that the Internal Revenue Service could refuse to recognize the same-sex marriages of couples who live in states where they aren't legal, some legal experts say.
Recalibrate your benefits.
After meeting with an accountant, the next stop for many same-sex couples should be their employee-benefits office at work.
"The most common benefit for people is that they will no longer have to pay tax on the health benefit you get for a same-sex spouse or domestic partner," says Lee Badgett, research director at the Williams Institute.
Until now, the Internal Revenue Service has considered health insurance for such partners to be "imputed income," costing the average couple about $1,000 in extra tax payments every year, she says.
Jonathan Lewis, 32 years old and the director of student engagement at Wheelock College in Boston, emailed his human-resources office Thursday asking to have the health-insurance tax removed. "The individual portion is tax-free, but I'm taxed on the difference between that and the family portion," he says.
Same-sex spouses should have access to long-term-care insurance discounts for couples as well, says Mr. Young, the New Jersey financial adviser. Employers with group coverage generally extend that benefit to spouses as well, he adds.
Revamp your estate plan.
A man and woman who marry traditionally have been able to pass assets between each other in life or death without any gift or estate tax, says Laura Zwicker, head of law firm Greenberg Glusker's private client group in Los Angeles.
"Same-sex couples haven't had that luxury," she says.
In fact, the case at the crux of the Supreme Court's Defense of Marriage Act ruling involved New York resident Edith Windsor, who would have been exempt from estate tax of $363,000 had her late spouse been male.
Since they haven't been considered married under federal law, same-sex couples until now have been subject to the federal gift- and estate-tax limits.
Generally, any gift of more than $14,000 a year, or $5.25 million in a lifetime, would be taxable. And any assets left upon death worth more than $5.25 million would be subject to estate tax.
It has left such couples with a tangle of property to unravel, Ms. Zwicker says. "Same-sex couples often come to us with already commingled assets trying to figure out if they need to do gift-tax reporting," she says. "They want to know if the earning spouse can provide for the nonearning spouse without having to pay tax."
Winning the federal exemptions could reap well-off same-sex couples big savings. In California, given the "crazy" home values, the $5.25 million exemption "is going to be enormous," Ms. Zwicker says.
It also means that they can cut down the complexity of their planning, switching to plain-vanilla bypass trusts traditionally used by married couples to double the assets they can leave to their families, and "cutting down 50-page wills that say, 'If this, then that,'" Ms. McDonagh says.
Don't forget about state estate taxes—and health-care proxies.
The Supreme Court ruling still leaves couples subject to any state-level taxes and complications in places that don't recognize their marriages.
Mr. Nead, who lives in Pennsylvania with his spouse, 58-year-old Thomas Augusta, says they drew up a wide-ranging estate plan that cost $5,800 and amounted to 6 inches of paperwork. "It gave us not as many rights as a $40 marriage license, but it simply had to be done," he says.
The couple anticipates owing Pennsylvania estate tax, since their marriage isn't recognized there, of 15% of every dollar in assets one partner leaves to the other, Mr. Nead says.
Several years ago, they considered buying life insurance to help the surviving spouse pay the estate tax, but the premiums would have cost thousands of dollars a year, so they decided it wasn't worth it, he says.
One note: Even couples who live in states that recognize same-sex marriage should take extra care with health-care powers of attorney naming their partners, lawyers say, just in case one spouse winds up hospitalized in a state where same-sex marriage isn't legal.
Mr. Lewis and his spouse, Jonathan Adler, have put together extensive documents that they store online and can access through Web links and PIN codes they keep on cards in their wallets.
They plan to keep those powers intact, since they frequently visit family in Florida, where same-sex marriage isn't recognized, they say.
"It's been an astounding amount of legal paperwork for being in our 30s," says Mr. Adler, a 34-year-old psychology professor at Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Mass.
The couple spent this past week with friends in Washington, D.C., awaiting the Supreme Court's decision with their 11-week-old son. "Now that we have a kid," Mr. Adler says, "the way we're affected is magnified."
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