Domestic Partner Benefits
Employers compensate employees through more than just wages and salary by providing benefits such as health insurance and dental care. The traditional benefits structure includes an employee’s opposite-sex spouse and children. An ever-growing number of employers, including the majority of Fortune 500 companies, further extend these benefits to GLBT employees and their families, including same-sex domestic partners and their children.
Domestic partners are two individuals who are in a long-term committed relationship and are responsible for each other's financial and emotional well-being.
In growing numbers, both public and private employers across the country recognize domestic partner benefits as an inexpensive option to attract and retain the best employees and to promote fairness and equality in the workplace.
- In 1982, the Village Voice, a weekly New York newspaper, became the first employer to offer domestic partner benefits to its employees’ same-sex partners.
- By 1990, nearly two dozen U.S. employers offered "spousal equivalent" benefits to their employees’ same-sex partners.
- Currently, a majority of the nation’s largest corporations provided health insurance for domestic partners of employees.
Domestic partner benefits can include the full range of benefits offered to spouses, including medical, dental and vision insurance, disability and life insurance, pension benefits, family and bereavement leave, adoption assistance, education and tuition assistance, credit union membership, relocation and travel expenses and inclusion of partners in company events.
Although more employers are relying on domestic partner registries to define who is eligible, employers can set their own definitions of "domestic partner." Most often, employers require that the partners are emotionally and financially interdependent, do not have a different domestic partner or spouse, have reached the age of consent and are not related.
- Definitions of domestic partner
- Cost of domestic partner benefits
- Writing a domestic partner benefits proposal
Domestic partner benefits and the law
No laws prohibit a private-sector employer from offering partner benefits, but federal and state laws do affect certain benefits and the taxation of health and retirement benefits. Laws such as the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and constitutional amendments at the state level have been interpreted to prohibit partner benefits for public employees. Various federal and state laws affect the taxation of health insurance benefits, including Flexible Spending Accounts, Health Reimbursement Accounts or Health Savings Accounts, as well as family and medical leave and Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) benefits continuation.
- Federal laws impacting domestic partner benefits
- Equal benefits ordinances
- Taxation of domestic partner benefits
- State laws
Types of benefits
Employers should evaluate their entire employee benefits packages for consistent treatment of domestic partners as compared to spouses. In particular, employers should examine the following benefits, all of which can be extended to same-sex domestic partners:
- Health benefits (medical, dental, vision, dependent coverage and COBRA benefits continuation)
- Other benefits (FMLA, bereavement leave, relocation/travel assistance, adoption assistance and employee discounts)
- Retirement benefits (retiree healthcare, pension plans and 401k's)
