HADLEY – Jay Ladin took out a two-year life insurance policy in 2006, intending to kill himself and leave everything to his three children.

After he discovered insurers would refuse to pay out on the policy in the event of a suicide, Ladin took out another life insurance policy of sorts: becoming Joy Ladin.

“I was counting the days,” says Ladin, now 50, of her premature end-of-life plan, reportedly common in the life of a transgendered person who, for many reasons, initially refused to make the transition to what he or she believes is his or her true gender identity. “We all spend nights bargaining with God.”

Ladin’s 18-year marriage crumbled in 2008, and her time with her children, who still call her “Dad,” was cut at least in half. Her tenured position as a literature professor at the prestigious Yeshiva University in Manhattan was threatened, and she was marginalized in the probate court system and by prospective landlords.

Gay advocates say Ladin’s tortured transformation is a blueprint for most others – at least those who have been identified.

The National Center for Transgender Equity said in a 2009 report that the numbers of transgenders in the population are hard to define because no central agency keeps track of them and many don’t come out publicly. But the agency estimates a quarter of a percent to 1 percent of the population is transsexual.

Transsexual rights are in their infancy. In progressive Massachusetts, the first state to permit same-sex marriage, in 2003, they were excluded from many civil protections until July 1, when a Transgender Equal Rights bill came into law.

The bill prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity in employment, education, housing, credit and lending and makes violence against transgender individuals a hate crime.

Including Massachusetts, 16 states plus Washington, D.C., have passed laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or expression, according to the Transgender Law and Policy Institute. Rhode Island was the first state to enact such legislation in 2001.

Certain municipalities and counties have passed their own anti-transgender discrimination laws over the years – the first being Minneapolis, Minn., in 1975. There are 142 more cities and counties that have ushered in similar mandates since, according to the institute.

Jennifer L. Levi, a professor at Western New England University School of Law, says family courts are, by many accounts, decades behind.

“We’ve seen courts treat gender identity in the same way courts treated sexual orientation decades ago,” said Levi, also the lawyer for seven gay and lesbian couples who petitioned the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to validate gay marriage nine years ago.

To that end, Levi has co-edited "Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy." Levi said there are not many reported cases of transgendered people as litigants throughout the country, but she wanted to pull all the case law together that she could to guide attorneys.

"There's not a lot, but there are some and most of it was pretty bad ... Being transsexual is often held against someone in a divorce, and many of these (divorce) cases don't even make it to the courts because the client is so afraid of the outcome they quickly negotiate away everything," said Levi, also director of the Transgender Rights Project at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders in Boston.

The book covers divorce law, estate planning, key transgender terms, changes in legal name and sex and attorney-client relationships with transgenders, among other topics.

Northampton lawyer Anne T. Margolis said she used the book as a reference when she had a female client who married a transgender man, and the father of the woman’s child challenged her sole custody.

“I found so many answers to basic questions including how to change your name and social security number, to how a lawyer should introduce a transgender client and other basic things like access to bathrooms in the person’s legal office,” Margolis said. “I also found guidance on very complex issues such as division of assets, pensions, guardianships and living wills.”

Margolis, like Levi, likened legal attitudes toward transgenders to “horror stories about domestic partners in the old days” when longtime same-sex domestic partners were completely cut off when their partners grew ill or died.

Transgenders are defined by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation as: “a term used to describe people whose gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth. Transgender people may or may not decide to alter their bodies hormonally and/or surgically.”

Ladin said she has encountered discrimination from gays and lesbians in addition to heterosexuals. Transgenders refer to themselves as “T-people,” she says, and differ greatly from those who simply are attracted to the same sex, or those who cross-dress as a way of expression.

Ladin said she was among those who essentially bargained away nearly everything in divorce court, and initially had to endure a test by a court-appointed guardian judging whether she posed a danger to her children as a transsexual.

She now has custody of her children three days per week, and commutes back and forth to her job in Manhattan in order to stay close to them.

There is a lot she will do for her children, considering what she could not do, Ladin says.

Her relationships with the three, now 18, 12 and 8, differ, but she describes them as positive.

“My youngest will be with me on the playground and call me ‘Daddy,’ and when people stare she’ll say: ‘I know. He’s my dad but he looks like a girl. Isn’t that funny?’” Ladin says.

They have all found ways to cope.

Levi said that although strides are being made in the transgender rights world, the group still report unemployment rates that are twice as high as the general population and 11 percent of transgenders report being evicted after going public. Â