Providing Benefits for Unmarried Domestic Partners

Global employers are increasingly aware that employee families' partnership is the foundation for expanding the interests of human resources. This approach creates impacts on various HR policies and has created a variety of legal, economic and social issues and considerations. These problems and considerations often lead to political and social controversy which began to settle at the beginning of the 21st century. Organizations developing domestic partner programs hope that these practices will help organizations achieve their goals.

The population structure of American traditional families is changing. More couples will become domestic partners and choose to remain unmarried; domestic partners include relationships of same sex and heterosexuality. It is important to understand the environment in which employers provide domestic partner benefits (DPB). The benefits provided to married employees are slightly different from the benefits (if any) provided to domestic partners, so DPB is a matter of marital status. Our goal is not only to provide a broad perspective on barriers to providing DPB from the human resource perspective but also to have some of the benefits of doing so.

Since the 1980s more and more states and municipalities have passed a law permitting unmarried couples (including heterosexuals and homosexuals) to register as domestic partners. Domestic partner registration has been established in some cities, but domestic partners have certain advantages without registration in other cities. California is leading nationwide by providing benefits to domestic partner registrars, or both cities and counties, that provide benefits to domestic partners. Cities offering domestic partner benefits include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia. The statutes and statues of these cities allow couple to register as a domestic partner and, if they are away, to dissolve their partnership.

The term "family partner welfare" refers to an employee benefit plan that provides unmarried couples or same-sex couples the same or similar benefits provided to heterosexual marriage partners. Presently, federal, state, or local law does not normally require most employers to provide employee's domestic partners with employee benefits. Due to DOMA, same-sex couples do not consider spouses according to federal law, so gay marriage rarely has a legal impact on most private sector employers. (Lotti, D., 2004) Of course, employers can voluntarily choose to expand some or all of their benefit schemes to domestic partners. However, as long as domestic partners are not entitled to depend on employees for federal tax purposes, tax effects may occur and exclusion of health insurance income under sections 105 and 106 of the Internal Revenue Code does not apply. (Moon, S., 2005), 8)