This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Five months after her husband's sudden death, Candice White has found that a birth certificate may be enough to send a polygamist to jail, but it is not enough to get his children Social Security benefits.
And while White was a plural wife, her situation applies to any unmarried couple who have children together - a category that includes 39 percent of the nation's 4.9 million unmarried, opposite-sex couple households.
White was the second wife of Gary D. White, who died five months ago at age 56. She asked to join his family in 1990, when she was 18 and he was 40, a union supported by his first and legal wife. There were some initial adjustments, White said, but "the marriage was great."
Some years, the women lived apart; other years, the family lived together in one home. White gave birth to three children: Kelly, 13; Charlie Ann, 11; and namesake Gary Ryan White, 7. They joined a much older half sibling.
For the past two years, Gary had lived full time with Candice and their children, working out of their home in Centennial Park, Ariz., as a freight broker. The arrangement allowed him to serve as Mr. Mom while Candice White worked as a bookkeeper for a construction company.
They were in the midst of building a new home in the community when life fell apart.
On May 8, White called her husband around noon to discuss a family activity. "He said someone else was beeping him and he'd call back," White said.
Fifteen minutes later, White's sister called to say Gary had collapsed on the driveway outside their home. He was pronounced dead at Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George, the same facility where he had participated in the births of their three children.
Just like that Gary was gone, leaving behind, as his obituary noted, his three minor children.
Ten days later, White contacted the Social Security Administration's office in St. George to ask about filing for survivor's benefits for their children. Her application was handed off to the agency's Flagstaff, Ariz., field office, which is 254 miles from Centennial Park.
White was told to send in the children's birth certificates - all of which list Gary as their father - his death certificate and his military service records.
White then received a form letter that asked questions aimed at establishing Gary's relationship to his children.
Had he ever registered the child in school? Listed himself as the parent at doctor or dentist's office or in a family tree? Made statements to anyone that he was the child's parent?
She learned from the caseworker the additional information was necessary because the birth certificates were not adequate proof he was their father.
White checked off the appropriate boxes, though she later realized she had inadvertently skipped a question about whether he had supplied information for the birth certificate and had misinterpreted at least one question.
As requested, she provided contacts for the children's school and orthodontist, whose records listed Gary as their father. White also provided telephone numbers for Gary's father, who could vouch for his son's relationship to the children, and Gary's sister, who kept the family's genealogy charts.
Weeks passed. When a worried White finally reached the caseworker again in July, she was told it was her responsibility to gather the records and written statements. And there was a new request that she provide a document or letter Gary had signed acknowledging his relationship with each child.
She recalled a form Gary had filled out at the orthodontist's office for their oldest daughter. She faxed it on Aug. 18.
Five days later, she received a letter denying benefits for all three children. The "facts" did not show Gary was their father, it said. She has 60 days to appeal.
In the meantime, White has found another document - a notarized letter Gary wrote in 2004 giving her permission to take their two oldest daughters to Canada - that may help.
Practitioners of plural marriage as a tenet of faith take varying approaches to birth certificates. Some supply a father's name and check the "married' box on the application, which is what Gary did.
"He did refer to me as his wife," White said. "He didn't think of it any other way."
Others leave the father's name blank, and that nettles some state authorities.
In June 2004, 3rd District Juvenile Judge Andrew Valdez ordered that polygamist John Daniel Kingston's name be added to birth certificates of his then 10 children with Heidi Mattingly Foster. Valdez specifically said he wanted to facilitate the children's inheritance rights.
Birth certificates also have figured prominently in efforts to prosecute polygamists for sexual conduct with minors and to strip two officers of their police certification.
That's what leads White to make this observation: "If a birth certificate is enough of a document to prosecute a man, isn't it enough of a document to give a man's children his Social Security?"
But polygamy is not the obstacle for White, according to Jan Foushee, spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration's Denver office.
"We don't get into why the child is not legitimate, per se," said Foushee, who would not comment specifically on White's case.
The obstacle is proving paternity out of wedlock, and a birth certificate isn't enough to ensure Social Security survivor's benefits, she said.
"A birth certificate is not proof of anything," Foushee said. "You can't presume anything with those children, like you could of children of married parents."
That is a distinction worth noting, given that 36 percent of all births today are to unmarried women, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
In Utah, there are two ways a father's name can be included on a birth certificate: If a couple says they are married at the time of a child's birth - which hospital staff typically don't challenge; or, if unmarried, a father fills out a declaration of paternity, which as of 1994 carries full legal clout.
That birth certificate is the first thing Social Security asks to see when an unmarried partner applies for survivor's benefits for children, Foushee said. A caseworker also may ask for witness statements, copies of hospital, church or school records that acknowledge parenthood, or even "something like a genetic test," Foushee said.
White's problem is nothing new, Foushee said. "I've been working for the agency for 30 years and we've had this type of claim from the beginning of my career," she said.
The extra hoops unmarried partners often encounter when dealing with the government rile advocates such as Dorian Solot, co-founder of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a national organization that works to ensure rights of unmarried couples.
"If the children of a married father would receive a certain type of benefit, children of an unmarried father should receive the same type of benefits without any additional inquiry or investigation as to whether he is the real father," Solot said in a telephone message.
But the reality is evidence is often required, which is what led Deborah Dillon of Kentucky to create an electronic library of documents unmarried couples can use to prepare for most eventualities.
"The solution [is] educating people that this is the kind of case you're going to face with the government," said Dillon, president of Muses Legal Products. "Once someone is deceased, you're absolutely at the mercy of a government agency, most of which don't have a grand desire to help, particularly if it saves them money."
White said that she and Gary had talked about the possibility he would not live long because of health problems - and about the financial cushion the survivor's benefit would provide for her and their children, which White has been told would be $1,800 a month.
"Nobody had a clue the birth certificate wasn't enough," she said, pointing out Gary put his name on the form despite the risk it could be used against him. "He would have sat down and wrote three letters saying these are my children if he had had a clue."