Knock wood, but...

As my boyfriend Ereck reported on his blog, this week he had a routine colonoscopy at the UW hospital. Thankfully everything went well, but I got to wondering: if one of us was hospitalized, would the other one be able to visit him, to make decisions, and so forth? I suspect not. As I understand it, married couples have these rights simply by virtue of being married, so this is one of the issues informing the current debate over gay marriage in Wisconsin.

So outside of being married, what do we need to do to make this happen? The answer is obvious, I know: see a lawyer. But have any of you Back With Interest readers looked into this yourselves?