What Is the Definition of Domestic Partner Benefits?

Domestic partner benefits are benefits that employers grant to employees' same-sex partners that are similar or equal to the benefits they give to heterosexual employees' legal spouses. These benefits grant access to health care coverage and other benefits in states where same-sex marriage isn't legalized. By recognizing the relationship of same-sex domestic partners, employers ensure that their gay and lesbian employees have benefits packages equal to their heterosexual counterparts.

Definition of a Domestic Partner

• Some states have a legal precedence for defining domestic partnerships for legal and financial benefits. In the states that don't have a preceding legal structure for defining domestic partnership, many employers define the term for themselves and their employees. For this reason, the definition of a domestic partnership may vary from state to state and sometimes from employer to employer. In general, though, domestic partners are two people, usually of the same sex, who are emotionally and financially interdependent through a long-term committed and exclusive relationship. They must live in the same household but have no familial relation to each other. They must share the responsibility for household maintenance and finances, and must have no other similar types of relationships or interdependencies with others. Additionally, both partners must be legal adults and either U.S. citizens or have valid legal status of residence in the U.S.

Common-law Marriages

• Some employers recognize opposite-sex domestic partners in their benefits policies. Many do not, as some states may instead impart the status of a common-law marriage to opposite-sex unmarried couples living together in long-term, interdependent committed relationships. States may have a different set of laws presiding over common-law marriages, which may restrict or define how an employer may grant benefits to employees in these kinds of relationships. Benefits for same-sex domestic partners are often necessary in states that recognize common-law marriages but don't allow same-sex marriages, because common-law marriage recognition only extends to opposite-sex couples. Therefore, any benefits that a common-law couple may accrue won't extend to same-sex couples living under similar circumstances.

  However, the reverse is often true: Domestic partnerships may receive benefits to which unmarried heterosexual couples are not entitled. In a 1999 federal court ruling, Foray v. Bell Atlantic, a judge ruled that an unmarried opposite-sex couple was not entitled to domestic partnership benefits from Bell Atlantic, the employer, because opposite-sex couples can get married and receive employer benefits that way. The judge rejected the claim of sex discrimination even though, the couple would have met the criteria for domestic partnership if they were a same-sex couple.

Prevalence

• In a 2008 study conducted by the Human Rights Campaign -- an organization that champions the legal and civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people -- nearly 85 percent of the Fortune 100 companies had a policy in place for benefits for same-sex domestic partnerships. The same study found that nearly 60 percent, or a small majority, of the Fortune 500 companies had similar policies in place. HRC further discovered that nearly 10,000 companies in the American private sector offered benefits to same-sex domestic partners, either as defined by the individual companies or defined by the laws of their states.

Significance

• Domestic partner benefits offer a significant safety net to the partners of same-sex employees. A 2006 UCLA study found that same-sex couples living together are two to three times more likely to have no health care coverage than their opposite-sex, married counterparts. This puts same-sex couples at a significant disadvantage for having access to affordable health care coverage. The same study concluded that widespread access to domestic partner benefits would decrease the number uninsured American adults substantially, while only incurring minimal increase in the costs of group insurance policies for employers.