DENVER (AP) – A gay man won another chance Oct. 19 to argue whether a typed letter in a birthday card given to him by his late partner qualifies as a will.

The ruling by the Colorado Court of Appeals reviving Randall Rex’s claim to his partner’s estate was quickly seized upon by a group campaigning to pass Referendum I, which would create a domestic partnership law, as proof state laws need to be changed. Opponents said the ruling shows same-sex couples are already protected by current laws and a new law is unnecessary.

Ronald Wiltfong gave Rex the card in 2003 with a letter that said Rex should inherit his property if anything happened to him. It said Rex, their pets and an aunt were his only family and that “everyone else is dead to me.”

After Wiltfong died of a heart attack a year later, Margaret Tovrea, the mother of Wiltfong’s three nephews and legal heirs if he died without a will, challenged the document.

A lower court ruled the will wasn’t valid because, while Wiltfong had signed the letter he presented in the presence of two friends, it said he hadn’t also acknowledged the letter was his will.

The appeals court said the law only requires that it either be signed or acknowledged as a will and sent the case back for reconsideration.

Sean Duffy, executive director of Coloradans for Fairness, said under the proposed referendum, surviving domestic partners would be presumed heirs of property just as surviving spouses now are. He criticized opponents for running a television advertisement showing that it was easy for two men to draw up legal paperwork to protect their rights, pointing to Rex’s two-year battle.

“It’s yet another concrete example of how the other side is callously ignoring the gaps in the law that hurt real people,” he said.

The leader of the opposition campaign – which paid for the ad – said the ruling shows the law is already providing protections for same-sex couples since the appeals court ruled the lower court made a mistake in throwing out the will even though it didn’t meet all the formalities described in the law.

“This case will undoubtedly end up with the man’s partner receiving the benefits in the will. That proves the law doesn’t need fixing,” said Jim Pfaff of Focus on the Family Action, the co-founder of an issue committee working to defeat Referendum I, which would allow same-sex couples to register as domestic partners and get many of the same rights as married couples under state law.

Pfaff said Duffy’s campaign was misleading voters by saying that domestic partnerships wouldn’t create the equivalent of marriage. Referendum I supporters say it’s not marriage because participants wouldn’t be entitled to any of the rights given to married couples under federal law and their domestic partnership would be invalid outside Colorado.

Under current law, same-sex and married couples can draw up wills stating who should inherit their property when they die. If there is no will or the will is found to be invalid, a surviving spouse is presumed to be the primary, if not the sole, heir of the property, said Stan Kent, a probate lawyer in Colorado Springs.

Kent said Referendum I would give that same presumption to surviving domestic partners so relatives would be less likely to challenge the validity of any wills they have.

Pfaff said a judge still has the final ruling in any probate case. He also said surviving spouses are presumed to be heirs under the law because the assets they inherit are needed to support their children, which he said same-sex couples don’t have.