Gay Couples Losing Perks

[w8liftinglady]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304314404576414003229539790.html

The legalization of gay marriage in New York means some couples may have to walk down the aisle for the most practical of reasons: to hold onto their partners' health insurance and other benefits.

At least two major employers—Raytheon Co. and International Business Machines Corp.—say New York employees in same-sex relationships now will have to get married if they want to qualify for the benefits.

The companies appear to be the exceptions among big corporate employers.

Most have continued to offer domestic-partner benefits—health care being the most common—to workers with same-sex partners in the states that recognize gay marriage.

Currently, 37% of Fortune 1000 companies provide domestic-partner benefits, according to a 2011 study by Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA's School of Law that researches sexual orientation in law and public policy.

After Massachusetts legalized same-sex unions in 2004, a few employers there dropped domestic-partner benefits and told staffers they had to wed.

However, most just kept their policies, according to research done by the Williams Institute. The employers most likely to drop the benefits were those that offer them only to same-sex couples; many firms offer benefits to heterosexual nonmarried couples as well.

[SoCalNative]

1. Quite honestly

they should have to get married to retain the benefits. Straight people do not get domestic partner benefits because they can get legally married, so why should gay people since they can now legally marry in NY.

[pnwmom]

2. If partnership benefits are retained, they should apply equally to all couples.

I doubt that business, however, will want to extend benefits to such a large population.

One more reason we need universal Medicare.

[yardwork]

3. The tricky thing is that those marriages only count in New York, Massachusetts, a few other states.

And even in those states the marriages aren't recognized by the federal government, which means no survivorship benefits for social security, still having to file as "single" with the IRS, etc.

Suppose a couple lives in New York, one of them works for IBM, to retain benefits they have to get married, ok sounds fair. But then IBM moves them to North Carolina. Suddenly their marriage isn't legally recognized by their state of residence anymore.

What I foresee is a tangle of legalities and complexities that will keep a lot of lawyers busy until we finally have universal equal marriage in the U.S.

[SoCalNative]

5. If IBM has domestic partner benefits

for employees in states where gay marriage is not legal then there is no issue, they still receive the same benefits.

Companies would only do away with DP benefits in locations where same-sex marriage is legally recognized.

[stevenleser]

4. My firm has same sex and opposite sex domestic partner benefits. n/t