It’s important for gay couples to have domestic partnership agreement (also known as joint property agreements). These agreements help clarify who owns what and what would happen if you were to break up. The most common piece of property warranting a domestic partnership agreement is a house.
The agreements are particularly important if domestic partners have unequal ownership in property. For example, one guy puts $50,000 down on the house and the other guy puts $0. The guy who put down $50,000 will want a domestic partnership agreement to show that he has more ownership in the house than the guy who put down nothing. For married couples, a judge will look at these things as part of the divorce process. But same-sex couples can’t get divorced, so they need to arrange these things beforehand through contracts.
Other than down payments, make sure you say who paid for what in closing costs, improvements, and repairs. The agreement can then reimburse the party who paid for these things. A common provision is that if one person pays more than 50% of the cost of an improvement, then that person gets credit for the cost of the improvement, but only if both people agreed to make the improvement. You can’t buy a swimming pool against your partner’s wishes and then get credit for it when you break up.
Specify how to handle debt. Let’s say one partner had great credit, so she put in about $40,000 on her credit card for furniture. You could add a provision that says that proceeds of the sale of a house or furniture pays off that credit card debt before payment to couples themselves.
These kind of agreement are upheld in court. And they streamline gay divorce. The contract will be like an instruction manual for a judge to easily divide property. And you get to avoid talking about silly topics in court like who didn’t take out the garbage or clean up after the dogs or whatever else.
People supporting gay marriage often cite many benefits, but believe it or not, the best benefit of gay marriage would be the right to get divorced.
With divorce, society has created this whole mechanism where you can go to court and say, ”Judge, we don’t like each other anymore, and we neeed help. We’ve been together 20 years, we’ve got all this stuff. Help us dissolve our relationship and divide up assets and debt.”
Just like straight couples, most gay couples don’t get prenups or domestic partnership agreements. They say, “Oh, it’ll last forever and we don’t need anything.” But then things go bad, feelings are hurt, emotions are involved, and people get vindictive. They aren’t nice.
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The best way for family law attorneys to help gay people who come to them for help is to ask the right questions. LGBT family law in Florida and elsewhere can be very complicated, and if you don’t ask the right questions in the initial consultation, you may not pick up on certain issues.
Here are some of the things I ask about:
Did They Get Married?
Is the couple already married? Was the marriage in another jurisdiction? If so, educate them that their marriage is invalid. No benefits whatsoever. Make sure they understand that the only protection they have is through legal documents.
They might call themselves husbands or wives or they may have had a commitment ceremony. Sometimes couples are shocked to learn that a name-change and marriage from another jurisdiction do nothing.
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While there is no statewide Florida domestic partnership registration that covers residents everywhere, cities and counties are free to enact their own. The benefit of registering a domestic partnership with a city or county is that it gives official recognition to the partnership. It’s still not marriage, but it can feel comforting and reassuring when the government legally recognizes your relationship with your partner.
At a minimum, you get an official document that lets you say, “Yes, we are officially domestic partners!” But in most places, it actually gives you legal benefits. Joe Sanders explained in the Orlando Sentinel, for example, the benefits of the Orlando registry:
The new Orlando registry will create within city limits the right for couples to become legal families. Registered couples, gay and straight, will gain vital protections like the ability to make health care decisions and funeral arrangements, visitation rights in health care facilities and the right to be notified in a life-threatening emergency.
The Requirements
Each particular city or county in Florida that offers domestic partnership registrations will have its own set of requirements. Take a look at each law that allows the registration to see which requirements apply. However, the registrations generally have the following requirements:
- Being 18 years old.
- Not being part of a civil union or marriage in Florida or anywhere else.
- Not being related to your partner.
- Living with your partner in the same house or apartment.
- Agreeing to take care of each other financially.
Florida Domestic Partnership Registration by County
I keep comprehensive guides on particular requirements and benefits for various Florida counties:
Florida Domestic Partnership Registration by City
I also keep guides on the requirements and benefits of Florida cities. You can find these here:
Don’t see your city or county above? More are coming. Be patient!
Non-Legal Benefits
Don’t forget about the emotional benefits of being officially recognized under a Florida domestic partnership: a sense of social approval, a public declaration of commitment, and a bond of legal interconnectedness.
More employers are offering gay and lesbian employees who cover their domestic partners or same sex spouses with their health care a health benefit tax reimbursement. For example, Facebook earlier this month joined other employers, including Barclays and Google, in offering employees the reimbursement.
Why There’s a Problem
- First, a company chooses to allow their LGBT employees to cover their partners under their employee health insurance.
- However, because the federal government does not recognize gay relationships, these employees owe income tax on this added benefit. If instead these employees were married to an opposite-sex spouse, they’d incur no such income tax.
- This means that domestic partners and same-sex spouses pay on average of $1,000 more per year than opposite-sex spouses.
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