Back in June President Obama signed a memo that gave long-term care benefits to same-sex domestic partners of federal employees. Here’s a PDF of the memo.
The Requirements:
To qualify for federal long-term care benefits, you and your partner must sign a Declaration of Domestic Partnership. In the declaration, you and your partner state that you
- Are each other’s sole domestic partner and intend to remain so indefinitely.
- Have a common residence, and intend to continue the arrangement indefinitely.
- Are at least 18 years of age.
- Share responsibility for a significant measure of each other’s financial obligations.
- Are not married to anyone else.
- Are not a domestic partner of anyone else.
- Are not related in a way that, if they were of opposite sex, would prohibit legal marriage in the State in which they reside.
What happens if you lie?
Saying that you and your partner meet these requirements when you do not could lead to disciplinary action from your employer, loss of insurance coverage, and possibly recovery of the cost of benefits that you’ve already received. Your misstatements may also be a crime. You should only register as domestic partners if you do indeed meet the listed requirements.
Rex Wockner of the Bay Windows newspaper listed some examples of the long-term care benefits:
According to the Office of Personnel Management, the benefits include “credit union membership; access to fitness facilities; hardship transfers to maintain or improve the health of a domestic partner to the same extent provided to opposite-sex spouses; planning and counseling services (including briefings on employee pay and allowances, career counseling, retirement counseling, financial counseling, resource and referral services, planning sessions for permanent change of duty station, deployment support, parenting support groups, and elder care support groups); family assistance services (including adoption counseling, parenting counseling, childcare, elder care, financial planning, and home improvements); family and morale/wellness/recreation (MWR) events (including barbeques, golf outings, or awards ceremonies); access to medical treatment; access to lodging or allowances; joint consideration of transfers; and accidental death and dismemberment insurance.
In addition to the LTC folks form and process (check out their website at http://www.ltcfesds.com) you are also required to file a “Declaration of Domestic Partnership” form with your federal agency that must be signed off on by OPM. Although LTC has the form on their website – it does not appear to be a federal form, and I have not found any process to file this form with my federal agency. I currently have an inquiry in to my HRM dept. There is an open season for LTC, through late June, but I don’t see any way that OPM – which is incredibly backlogged- could process these if there is even a process. If my partner enrolls now, she will be subject to abbreviated underwriting. If we can’t make the deadline for open season, she’d have to go through full underwriting – a big deal for us since we are both in our 60s. I seriously question the legitimacy of this “benefit.”