Delighted, that is, until the local authorities informed them they had defied local ordinances by raising children out of wedlock and denied them permission to stay.
"We knew about the occupancy permit and that we needed it to reside in our home," said Olivia, 31, who is raising Alexia 15, Katarina 10 and Fondray Junior, eight, with her partner aged 33. "We were under the impression that that permit was based on how many people can stay in the house and that it was up to code. Our house was approved for 10 people so we didn't think there was going to be any problem at all," she said.
So when she went down to city hall to get the permit, she assumed that her only problem was going to be the delay in the birth certificates of two of her children arriving in the mail. She added the names of the children to the paperwork without the certificates. But then came the shock. The official said: "Do you have your marriage certificate?" She explained she did not. "You don't fit our definition of family, so we have to deny you," the woman replied.
"I said: 'What does that mean, definition of family?' I almost chuckled. I was thinking 'are you serious? You just cannot be serious.' She said she wouldn't give me the permit and now we were in violation of the ordinance." The punishment until they married would be a $500 a day fine.
She did not give up. She took the woman at her word that they had the right to appeal and one evening in late January, the couple went before a four-person panel. One of the participants could not be found so a local replacement was rustled up. Another was late, but eventually turned up saying he had been at home sleeping, Ms Shelltrack said. A woman who turned out to be in charge of housing in the town, appeared first, passing around copies of a newspaper article around the panel-members' seats. The article referred to an earlier case, from 1999, when another couple was denied a permit after having triplets - two more children than are allowed to be raised by a couple out of wedlock according to the town's rules.
"It was like they were pleased with themselves," she said. "Me and Fondray looked at each other and right then we knew it was gonna be bad."
So finally, 20 minutes late, at 6.20pm, the board of adjustments began its proceedings. The unidentified woman with the articles stood up and said how the town had never approved such permits in the past, that this was a town that followed the law, and the definition of the family handed down by the Supreme Court.
The whole thing lasted about an hour. The panel asked how long they had been together, whey they were not married, where had they lived before. "I kept thinking I don't understand what any of this has to do with us living in the house we just bought. I just couldn't understand why they needed to know this, why is this any of your business, why I have to justify my relationship in front of complete strangers. It seemed so crazy to me."
The unidentified woman started accusing them of being deceitful, she said, that they knew full well the local ordinances. That was the point when the questions started to really irritate the couple. "She points at my face and says I don't know why you, as a woman, didn't exercise your right to marry this man."
The couple walked out shortly after that, before they said anything they might regret later. "You're just not giving us anything we can work with," one of the men said, after the couple said they hadn't set a date after living together for 13 years.
The couple's neighbours and their children's schoolfriends and teachers have all been very supportive, which makes it all the more bewildering to the couple.
However, a clue to the city hall's thinking can be found in a letter that Mayor Norman McCourt wrote to the couple in the 1999 case, whose right to remain in the town was complicated by the fact that the woman in question filed assault charges against her partner, which she later dropped.
The mayor pointed this out in the letter, addressed to the legal counsel of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought the matter to his attention. The circumstances were unfortunate, he said, but were mostly of the couple's own making, he wrote. "The easiest resolution to cure the situation would be for them to be married. Our community believes that this is the appropriate way to raise a family."
He has recently been quoted as saying that the intention of the ordinance was only to prevent overcrowding. Olivia and Fondray are beginning to doubt that. You can see the city's explanation for the rule here.
The local ACLU plans to fight the case in court, while still hoping that the matter will quietly go away. The couple remains determined that they will not get married until they have saved up for a big party. They chose to buy a house for their children rather than get married. "We do want to get married eventually but we don't want to run to the courthouse. We love each other and we're best friends, we just felt a piece of paper isn't going to change anything. It won't change the way we parent our children or make the children better children. Our children are great, smart, happy kids," Olivia said.
So now Olivia and her partner, who works as a senior customer service representative for a payroll company, are waiting to see what will happen and hoping the town doesn't try to start fining them. The other couple who faced a smiliar problem eventually left the town - and went on to have twins - but are now doing fine, according to Anthony Rothert, the legal director of the local ACLU.
"We had been hoping to avoid going to court," he said. "There are some archaic court cases out there to go with Black Jack's archaic laws, so this matter will not be the automatic open-and-shut case many people would expect it to be. That said, we are quite confident that the time is right for some of those rotten case decision of the past to be revisited and rejected by courts with more modern sensibilities."
He said Black Jack had initially indicated it would change its law and the council's own planning commission unanimously recommended that they do so, but the council itself, when it later voted on the matter, had rejected that recommendation. "We are left to speculate as to the City's motivation," he said.
Send your comments on this article using the form below, and they will be considered for publication. It may be necessary to edit your contribution. Wherever possible we would like you to include your name and town of residence. Priority will be given to e-mails providing these details.
