Nearly 50,000
couples have registered as domestic partners in California
since its DP registry opened on January 1, 2000. So now that
there's marriage equality in the state, thanks to the
California Supreme Court's ruling Thursday,
what do domestic partners and curious observers need to
know? We asked Jennifer C. Pizer, senior counsel for Lambda
Legal.
The Advocate
: Will domestic partnerships
automatically convert to marriage?
Pizer:
Nothing happens to those registered
domestic partnerships unless the couples decide to change
their legal status. California's domestic
partner registry is open to gay and lesbian couples
and heterosexual couples if one person is at least 62. There
is no automatic provision that domestic partnerships
will become a marriage. The registered domestic
partnership law is intact and unchanged by
[Thursday's] ruling, and unless and until some legislators
suggest that it should be changed, it will remains as
it has been.
If a same-sex couple in a domestic partnership gets
married, does it change their domestic partnership status?
If you've
been in a registered domestic partnership and you marry,
your registration remains as a registration. You will
have two legal statuses that are completely consistent
with each other. People can have two overlapping
statuses. If the couple were to break up -- which is sad --
they can go into court and the court could dissolve both
statuses at once.
Which court?
The family court
has the power to terminate or dissolve registered
domestic partnerships and they can dissolve a marriage.
Is there any benefit to being both registered
domestic partners and married?
I could imagine
circumstances in which a couple might find it helpful
because there are some states that have an anti-marriage
recognition law that doesn't cover domestic
partnerships or civil unions. So if a couple were to
travel into a state like that, there could be a benefit. But
we're not recommending people have both -- this
is a technical, legal way of thinking about it.
Is there a tax difference in how domestic partners
and married same-sex couples will be treated?
This spring is
the first time domestic partner couples had to file taxes
according to the same rules as married heterosexual couples.
Married same-sex couples will be treated under state
law like married heterosexual couples.
But not federally.
Not having the
federal government respect our marriages and our domestic
partnerships is not made more or less complex by being
married as opposed to being in a registered domestic
partnership. The disconnect between state and federal
law is the same either way.
Do you think that the number of couples entering
into domestic partnerships will increase if the
California Supreme Court blocks gay marriage until
after the November election, when a constitutional
amendment banning same-sex marriage is expected on the ballot?
We don't
expect it to be blocked. If the Court was going to be
receptive to that, they would have paused the effect
of its decision [already] and it chose not to. It
seems extremely unlikely that they would be receptive
to the rightwing groups' request to delay. (William
Henderson,
The Advocate
)
