NEW JERSEY – Seven gay and lesbian New Jersey couples, along with many of their children, are going to court to try to force the state to recognize gay marriage.

The families say in their legal complaint that the state’s civil union law designed to give gay couples the same legal protections as married couples has not fulfilled that promise.

One man says he was denied being able to make urgent medical decisions for his partner. Another saw his partner and children’s health insurance canceled by a skeptical auditor. One woman had to jump through legal hoops to adopt the baby of her civil union.

Along with the gay advocacy groups Garden State Equality and Lambda Legal, the couples planned to announce details of the lawsuit on Wednesday. The advocacy groups provided a copy to The Associated Press on the condition that no details be published before Wednesday morning.

The lawsuit, to be filed in state court, comes less than a week after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law allowing gay marriage in that neighboring state. But it’s the latest step in a nine-year legal battle in New Jersey.

States afford gay couples a hodgepodge of rights. New Jersey is one of seven states that offer the same legal protections of marriage, but call it either civil unions or domestic partnerships.

New Jersey’s civil union law is cast as the villain in the suit.

“The separate and inherently unequal statutory scheme singles out lesbians and gay men for inferior treatment on the basis of their sexual orientation and sex and also has a profoundly stigmatizing effect on them, their children and other lesbian and gay New Jerseyans,” the claim says.

The legal filing tells the stories of seven couples — two of whom previously sued for the right to marry — and the problems they say they’ve faced since the state began offering civil unions in 2007.

Their lawyer, Lambda Legal’s Hayley Gorenberg, said most people in places like medical offices don’t want to discriminate against them, but don’t understand the rights conferred through civil unions.

“People are not badly inclined toward them,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “They are just flummoxed” by the civil union requirements.