wealthschema/archetypes/x-03-lgbtq-household
X-03EmergingAccumulationmoderate tax complexity

LGBTQ+ Household

Same-sex married couple navigating unique financial planning considerations, adoption costs, estate planning, beneficiary designations.

X-03 is the same-sex married household whose financial planning surface includes adoption and surrogacy financing, beneficiary-designation review across pre-Obergefell accounts, and estate-planning decisions that historically required workarounds and now require careful migration to MFJ-eligible structures.

Age Range
28–50
Net Worth
$100k–$1M
Cohort
Emerging

About this archetype

X-03 represents the same-sex married household navigating financial planning under the post-Obergefell (2015) federal recognition regime, with the residual complexity that recognition created in pre-existing accounts and estate documents. The diagnostic surface for tax software is largely standard MFJ — joint filing, full marital deduction under §2056 — but the pre-Obergefell history is the wrinkle: retirement-account beneficiary designations executed pre-2015 may still name parents or siblings as primary beneficiaries, and ERISA spousal-rights provisions (§§401(a)(11) and 417) under federally qualified plans now apply by default but may have been waived under old elections. For estate-planning software the historical Defense of Marriage Act overhang produced a generation of complex workarounds — irrevocable trusts holding life-insurance benefits, joint tenancy with right of survivorship instead of true marital ownership, separate-rather-than-community-property arrangements in community-property states — that now warrant review and often replacement under simpler MFJ-eligible structures.

The corpus reflects a settled affluent married demographic: median income $129k, median net worth $627k, median age 38, and all 17 households file MFJ. Family-formation costs are a distinguishing feature — 13 of 17 carry one or more dependents and the corpus carries above-base-rate education-funding goals, reflecting the cost of adoption (federally averaging $20k–$50k for domestic agency placements) and surrogacy (commonly $100k–$200k all-in for gestational surrogacy in the US). The Adoption Credit under §23, currently at $16,810 per child (2024) and subject to MAGI phase-out, is the relevant tax-software branch. State distribution skews MA, TX, and GA — a mix of long-recognising states and post-Obergefell states that creates a useful testing surface for state-marital-property and state-domestic-partnership conversion logic.

What distinguishes X-03 from neighbouring household-formation archetypes is the documentation-and-migration surface, not the steady-state economics. A same-sex married household at the same income with no adoption costs, no pre-Obergefell beneficiary residue, and no surrogacy financing fits A-03 (dual-income professional couple). What makes X-03 a distinct testing population is the explicit need to handle adoption-credit eligibility, beneficiary-review workflows, and state-marital-property migrations.

Defining characteristics

  • Same-sex marriage
    All 17 corpus households file MFJ under post-Obergefell recognition. Federal tax treatment is fully standard; state treatment varies in a small number of states whose statutes have not been updated to gender-neutral language.
  • Adoption costs
    Median household carries adoption-cost or education-funding goals reflecting domestic adoption ($20k–$50k typical) or international adoption (higher) financing. §23 Adoption Credit eligibility testing is the relevant tax-software branch.
  • Surrogacy cost financing
    Gestational surrogacy in the US averages $100k–$200k all-in. Surrogacy expenses are generally not deductible as medical expenses under §213 (current IRS position) — the corpus supports testing UI that surfaces this correctly rather than miscategorising.
  • Estate planning
    Beneficiary designations and trust structures executed pre-Obergefell warrant review. The federal marital deduction under §2056 now applies; pre-existing irrevocable-trust workarounds may be obsolete or inefficient.
  • Beneficiary designations
    ERISA spousal-rights provisions under §§401(a)(11) and 417 now apply by default. Pre-2015 beneficiary forms naming non-spouse parties (parents, siblings) may have been technically valid at execution but now require spousal waiver to remain in force.
  • MFJ filing
    Married-filing-jointly is the dominant filing status (17 of 17). The federal tax surface is standard joint filing; the distinctive complexity sits in pre-existing-account migration and family-formation cost handling.

Corpus signature

n = 17 households

Aggregated across the 17 X-03 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$130k
p25–p75 $108k–$158k
Median net worth
$627k
mean $627k
Liquid net worth
$233k
median
Investable assets
$425k
median
Income distribution
$95k–130k
9
$130k–165k
4
$165k–200k
4
Net-worth distribution
$200k–500k
7
$500k–800k
4
$800k–1.1m
6
Goals across the corpus
Retirement17 / 17
Education funding13 / 17
Debt payoff8 / 17
Emergency fund5 / 17
Home purchase4 / 17
Liability composition
Credit cards17 / 17
Mortgages13 / 17
Student loans8 / 17
Auto loans5 / 17
  • 13 of 17 (76%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
  • MA, TX, GA account for 7 of 17 households — 41% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 38 (range 25–47 across primaries and spouses).
  • 13 of 17 (76%) carry one or more dependents.
  • Married filing jointly is the dominant filing status (17 of 17).

Representative household

X-03-seed-3
Ethan K.Married filing jointly·Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA

Ethan and Marcus sit at the corpus income median and well above the net-worth median — a settled mid-forties married couple in Atlanta carrying dependents (the corpus norm) and education-funding goals at $573k target. Liquid net worth of $349k against $314k of liabilities is healthy, but both education funding and retirement are flagged off-track. This is the household where the planning conversation involves dependent funding for adopted children plus normal accumulation pressure, against an asset base built largely post-Obergefell — the migration surface is smaller here than for older corpus members, but the family-formation cost surface is dominant.

Combined income
$129,549
Net worth
$901,726
Liquid NW
$349,256
Ages
43 / 44
Top goals on this household
Education funding
$573,005
Retirement
$2,661,900

Schema fields covered

Every X-03 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
accounts.taxable.lots[].acquisition_date
accounts.taxable.lots[].cost_basis
accounts.taxable.lots[].unrealized_pnl
taxes.wash_sale_flags

Who builds against this archetype

Three buyer profiles draw on X-03 most heavily. Tax-software vendors building MFJ return-preparation flows use it for §23 Adoption Credit eligibility, MAGI phase-out testing, and the medical-expense §213 misclassification surface around surrogacy and IVF costs — the right test population because the credit and disqualification logic matters in volume here. Wealth-platform engineering teams use it for beneficiary-designation review workflows that surface pre-2015 retirement-account beneficiaries and prompt spousal-rights waiver collection where required, and for estate-document review queues that flag pre-Obergefell trust structures for replacement. Mortgage and consumer-lending teams use it as a fair-lending testing population for joint applications under state-by-state recognition variance.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01§23 Adoption Credit eligibility computation with MAGI phase-out and qualifying-expense documentation.
  • 02Surrogacy and assisted-reproduction expense classification — §213 medical-expense treatment is generally not available; UI must surface that correctly.
  • 03Beneficiary-designation review workflow against pre-Obergefell retirement accounts; ERISA spousal-rights waiver collection.
  • 04Estate-planning document review queues for pre-2015 trust structures, joint-tenancy workarounds, and life-insurance-trust holdings now eligible for simpler MFJ-based replacement.
  • 05State-marital-property analysis in community-property states (TX in particular for this corpus) under post-Obergefell recognition.
  • 06Dependent education-funding planning at materially higher target amounts reflecting adoption and surrogacy origination costs.
  • 07Joint mortgage application processing with fair-lending controls on state-of-domicile recognition variance.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

X-03 specifically models settled same-sex married households. Households in domestic-partnership or civil-union status rather than marriage are excluded by design — those have a meaningfully different federal tax surface (separate filing, no §2056 marital deduction) and warrant separate treatment. Households navigating divorce within a same-sex marriage belong in S-01 (divorce in progress) with overlay rather than X-03. Single LGBTQ+ individuals at this income are A-03 or F-03 with overlay rather than this corpus. Households with children from prior heterosexual relationships, complex custody arrangements, or step-child structures belong in BL-01 (blended family). Trans-specific medical-expense and §213 testing — gender-affirming care eligibility under post-O'Donnabhain treatment — is a relevant overlay but is not isolated as the diagnostic feature here; reach for HC-03 or A-05 with overlay if that surface is the test target.

Calibration notes

Income and net-worth bands during v3 synthesis were anchored to mass-affluent dual-income segments of the Survey of Consumer Finances, with same-sex household prevalence informed by US Census Bureau ACS data and Williams Institute UCLA published research on same-sex-couple income and household-composition distributions. Adoption-cost and surrogacy-cost magnitudes were informed by Child Welfare Information Gateway and industry-published surrogacy-cost ranges. State distribution (MA, TX, GA concentration) reflects a deliberate mix of long-recognising (MA) and post-Obergefell (TX, GA) states to support state-marital-property migration testing. Per CLAUDE.md §9 the v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code, so calibration claims are descriptive rather than reproducible. The corpus is written with respect for the demographic but stays focused on the technical and regulatory testing surface.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the X-03 archetype represent?+

X-03 — LGBTQ+ Household represents the same-sex married household navigating financial planning under post-Obergefell federal recognition, with family-formation costs (adoption, surrogacy) and pre-existing-account migration as the distinguishing planning surface. Median income $129,549, median net worth $626,980, all 17 corpus households file MFJ.

What tax-software features does X-03 exercise?+

§23 Adoption Credit eligibility with MAGI phase-out, surrogacy and assisted-reproduction expense §213 classification, beneficiary-designation review workflows on pre-Obergefell accounts, ERISA §§401(a)(11) and 417 spousal-rights waiver collection, and state-marital-property analysis in community-property states.

How is X-03 different from A-03 (Dual-Income Professional Couple)?+

A-03 is the general dual-income mass-affluent couple. X-03 layers same-sex marriage, adoption-and-surrogacy financing, and pre-Obergefell account migration on top. When those layered surfaces are the test target, reach for X-03; when general dual-income accumulation is the test, A-03 is the right population.

Are domestic-partnership households included?+

No. X-03 specifically models legally married same-sex couples under post-Obergefell federal recognition. Domestic partnerships and civil unions have a different federal tax surface (separate filing, no §2056 marital deduction) and are excluded from this corpus by design.

How were X-03 households generated?+

Deterministically from a seeded sampler (Mulberry32 PRNG) in src/lib/generation/, with same-sex marriage, dependent-formation, and adoption-cost flags applied as overlay attributes. Per-domain version constants are surfaced in each household's _meta block.

Is the X-03 corpus regenerable?+

No. The shipped 1,451-household v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code (drift confirmed 2026-05-09). Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release with per-archetype golden fixtures in CI to prevent silent drift.

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