As love affairs go, the union of Marshall Gardiner and J'Noel Ball seemed familiar in its contours. He was a lively 85-year-old widower and former Kansas state legislator who made a pile in the stock market. She was half his age, an assistant professor of finance at his alma mater, Park College. Four months after they met they wed. Just 11 months later Marshall succumbed to a heart attack, leaving behind no will and an estate worth nearly $3 million. Under Kansas law it should simply be split evenly among his spouse and heirs. But a private eye hired by Marshall's estranged son Joseph to investigate the stepmother he hardly knew uncovered something surprising: before surgeries in 1994 and 1995, J'Noel was known as Jay Noel, a man. Joe Gardiner sued for control of the entire estate, claiming that the marriage was same-sex and illegal. J'Noel says their marriage was "more loving than any relationship I have ever experienced or seen," and argued in a case heard by the Kansas Supreme Court recently that, as his widow, J'Noel is entitled to half Marshall's assets.
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