A judge refused to accept a competing will in a dispute over the $7.5 million estate of Gloria Hemingway, the transgendered child of novelist Ernest Hemingway.

Judge Arthur Rothenberg on Monday asked attorneys to draft legal briefs on the ``cutting-edge issue'' of same-sex marriages because of one-time wife Ida Hemingway's claim that they married again after Gloria Hemingway's gender-changing surgery.

Children contesting Ida's claim to an inheritance say the claimed 1997 same-sex remarriage in Washington is irrelevant and not recognized in Florida or Washington.
``The basic issue was whether she was a spouse or not,'' the judge said.

Gloria Hemingway, born the author's youngest son Gregory, died in a Miami jail after her arrest on an indecent exposure charge in 2001.

Gloria Hemingway, a physician for 15 years, wrote the 1976 book ``Papa: A Personal Memoir.'' Gloria Hemingway had four wives, including Valerie Danby-Smith, her father's secretary the final four years of his life. The elder Hemingway killed himself in 1961.

A will written in 1994 and admitted in probate court in Miami soon after Gloria's death called for the estate to be split among Gloria's eight children and Ida, but the couple had later divorced with a settlement excluding Ida from inheriting. They were married from 1992 to 1995.

Eight months after Gloria's death, Ida Hemingway produced a will bearing dates in 1997 and 1998 leaving $1,000 each to three of Gloria's eight children, $20,000 to a friend and the rest to Ida.

Ida Hemingway said she found the will in a desk in storage in Montana. Children contesting the will claim it is counterfeit, a forgery or was written under Ida's undue influence.

With agreement from both sides, Rothenberg appointed retired Judge David Tobin as a mediator in hopes of avoiding a trial, tentatively set for October.

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