What Effect Will the California Domestic Partner Law Have?
Answered by Kim I. Mills, education director for the Human Rights Campaign and oversees HRC WorkNet. Nov. 8, 2001
California domestic partners and private employers
Q: Dear Kim,
What effect will the new California domestic partner law (CA A.B. 25) have on whether private companies would be required to provide health care and/or other benefits to registered domestic partners? Thank you for your assistance.
Kim
A: Dear Kim,
While A.B. 25 will provide a host of important benefits, it will not require private employers to offer health insurance to domestic partners who register in California.
Key benefits in the new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, allow domestic partners to:
- Make medical decisions for their partner in the hospital or act as a conservator of their estate;
- Be exempt from state income tax for the health benefits provided to domestic partners;
- Continue health benefits for surviving partners of government employees and retirees;
- Sue for wrongful death as well as seek damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress;
- Use sick leave to care for an ill partner or the child of a domestic partner;
- Relocate with a domestic partner without losing unemployment benefits;
- File disability benefits on behalf of an incapacitated partner;
- Administer a partner's estate;
- Bequeath property to a domestic partner using the statutory will; and
- Adopt a partner's child using the stepparent adoption process.
The law will also allow opposite-sex couples to register if one or both partners are over 62 years of age.
You can read the bill in its entirety on the California Assembly website.
A measure to establish civil unions in California (CA A.B. 1338) was introduced this year by Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a West Hollywood Democrat, but will not get official scrutiny in the statehouse until January. California GLBT advocates say that they plan to press for further expansion of rights for domestic partners in the coming year.
Sincerely,
Kim I. Mills
Mills is HRC's education director and oversees HRC WorkNet.
Nov. 8, 2001