What happened to Harold and Clay is one of the many reasons same sex couples need more than visitation rights and ALL the same legal rights as anyone who is civilly married:
Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. The only memento Clay has is a photo album that Harold painstakingly put together for Clay during the last three months of his life.
Read the whole brutal story, if you can stand it, at Bilerico.