One of the strangest things that often is used as justification for getting married is to save money on health insurance. As Morgan has pointed out to me several times, that "equivalency" trivializes marriage.
I agree with her. The very idea that a normal expense like health insurance and the discount offered by the privileged status people can voluntarily assume so long as they are consenting adults of the opposite sex is troubling, to say the least. If x=health insurance, rent, car insurance, taxes, How many times have we heard that people want to get married because, "Besides, we can save money on (x)?" Of course, this usually follows the primary answer "because we love each other." Marriage is supposed to be about love, right?
Yes. It is about love for the people who love each other and want to express their love in the form of a recognition of and celebration of that love in a lifelong union that will perhaps bring joy, stability, and perhaps children to their lives.
When you get married, these are the things to which you are entitled and encouraged to do in celebration of your wedding:
- Print your picture in the paper, along with your name, your job, and your parents and immediate family,
- Your family and friends show up, just to see you and your significant other!
- You get to decide how to throw a huge party (in your honor), you make a wish list of gifts, and people buy them for you!
- Your ceremony is likely beautiful, it will include vows to the person you love most in the world, you kiss them, you dance with them, and you are wished well by everyone.
Who wouldn't want to be officially recognized in society, and affirmed for the choices they've made by the people who matter most? We all do. Unfortunately, that is not a luxury that is afforded to us all. It was not until 2000 that the even New York Times printed same-sex wedding announcements, after Vermont codified civil unions for BLGT couples (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/fashion/weddings/how-the-vows-column-came-about.html). And recently a prominent paper in North Dakota, in a "tersely-worded letter" refused the print the wedding announcement of a couple that had planned to marry in New York State, where same-sex marriage is recognized. The reality today, however, is that more and more major newspapers are printing those recognitions.
However, it seems that institutions such as the finance industry and the federal government and some state governments see fit to reward only some of the people who want to engage in that recognition and celebration.
So, we have covered in previous blogs the executive summary of legal benefits that come with federal recognition of marriage. We have both done research with our respective employers, banks, and insurance companies, and here are some of our more generalized findings. Here are some things that are financial benefits we have investigated that are particular features of marriage, as opposed to domestic partnership:
Universal recognition: If you use the words "husband" and "wife" that is put on par with "son" "daughter" "brother" or "sister" when talking about any matter involving insurance or financial benefits. If your "partner" is involved, special accomodations must be made. If you are among the privileged who is lucky enough to have a legally recognized "partner" (aka husband or wife) then you will have no difficulty in getting access to whatever financial records or decision-making authority.
However, we have generally found the following in our recent dealings as consumers of the services of the finance/insurance/real estate industry.
1. Personal Banking: If you do have a checking or savings bank account when you are married, we learned, you must sign a document giving access to your spouse, or they will not have access. It may make sense to keep our respective accounts as they are, at two different banks...but then there's the matter of the wedding expense account, which we had to choose to put in one of our names. So....we'll see. But we definitely don't have to be married to open up a joint checking or savings account, if we want to.
2. Car Insurance: You are definitely encouraged to get on one policy or the other, even if you have two cars. We have yet to find out what the cost differential is. Some car insurance carriers have a practice or tradition or custom that necessitates that the husband is listed first on the policy, before the wife, just as a matter of course. And some car insurance carriers make it next to impossible for you to switch! But that's not really relevant to the matter at hand.
3. Homeowners'/Renters' Insurance: We are still trying to figure this out, but for now, we are doing what we guess a lot of domestic partners do: Just cancel one of our policies, and rely on the other. Is that safe? I don't know, but it's easier than going twelve rounds trying to figure out if we can have two adults on the same fire damage policy. Who has time for that?
4. Life Insurance: Both of us already have each other as beneficiaries in our life insurance policies (mine, I assume, only applies if I am somehow at work while lecturing to a class full of students and I am accidentally and instantaneously dismembered and then die), but if we had not spelled that out, our next of kin (our siblings?) would have gotten benefits as we are not married.
5. Health Insurance: This is the biggie. Both of us are currently covered through our respective employers, and we are trying to determine
a. If it's even worth it to consolidate onto one plan (i.e. which one would cost more to be on)
b. Which plan that would be.
c. If either plan does not recognize domestic partner benefits, only marriage benefits.
Both of us have been going back and forth with our employers over especially this last bit, and from what we can gather, there are some insurance plans that don't distinguish "married" from an additional "adult" on the plan, and thereafter how many dependent children are on the plan. Some insurance companies, we have learned, have criteria that spell out domestic partner benefits. I will print below excerpts from one especially helpful document from a policy that turned out not be ours (it was mistakenly forwarded to us by the person in charge of the health insurance plan at work):
Domestic Partner shall mean an unmarried person who
(a) has attained the age of 12 years,
(b) has lived with an unmarried Primary Enrollee in a committed, mutually dependent financial re1ationship, as each other’s sole domestic partner for six 561 months or more and intends to remain in the relationship indefinitely,
(c) is not related by marriage or blood to the Primary Enrollee in a way that would bar marriage,
(d) demonstrates financial interdependence by submission of proof of three (3) or more of the following documents:
(i) 21 Domestic Partner agreement;
(ii) a joint mortgage or lease;
(iii) a designation of one of the partners as beneficiary in the other partner’s will;
(iv) a durable property and health care power of attomey;
(v) a joint title to an automobile, or joint bank account or credit account; or
(vi) such other proof as is sufficient to establish economic interdependency; and
(e) meets any applicable federal, state, or local laws which are now in force or may be enacted in the future. [Insurance provider] reserves the right to request documentation of any of the foregoing prior to commencing coverage for the Domestic Partner.
Now, call me crazy, but this is a liveable policy! It makes pretty good sense in terms of how they determine whether or not someone is *really* a domestic partner. Sadly, to reiterate, it is just one insurance company's policy, and it turns out to not be either of our respective insurance carriers. Some insurance companies do an audit of whether or not someone is eligible for health insurance by demanding to see marriage certificates. I would trust, as an auditor, more a joint lease or mortgage, or mutual power of attorney, over a marriage certificate any day. It turns out that the bad news for us, though, that one of our employers does not include domestic partner benefits currently in the existing group insurance agreement with the health insurance provider. The existing agreement (between the Big Insurance Firm and the Non-profit Employer) would have to be amended, but, in fairness, we have not received a final answer as to whether or not that is possible in our case. Our other employer is telling us that it is indeed possible to cover someone else who the employee is not married to, but it may be more expensive to do that than to go with the insurer without domestic partner provisions.
Now, even if it turns out that in our case, it may be slightly advantageous to be married than to not be married in the case of our health insurance, it seems as if there are ways around the marriage requirement in virtually all other areas of consumer finance with which we have to deal. We are lucky enough, it should be noted, to both be employed and to have health insurance through those employers. What happens if one of us is not employed, or needs to stay home and be a caregiver while we have small children?
It would seem there is a silver lining, however. In all five of the above consumer finance products, marriage is indeed the "norm" and the assumption, and indeed even the encouraged and recognized, even official state of affairs. In all five cases, though, it seems there are ways around being married to reap the benefits of traditional marriage as a consumer in the finance industry. The good news is that domestic partners have options in all five cases, and thus marriage perhaps in the case of "insurance" generally may not be necessary for us, at least in the short term, and in our particular circumstance, which may not hold true for most people, or even for most people who do not have the option of state-recognized marriage.
It also portends the future, as well: If insurance companies and consumer banks, who routinely field consumer demands for domestic partner benefits, have virtually already crafted policies to engage with that new reality, that is a de facto recognition of alternatives to marriage that is more than likely utilized by most domestic partners. If Private Business can deal with gay couples and treat them as such while valuing them as customers in a business relationship, perhaps there is yet hope for Public Government to value them as citizens in a democratic relationship.
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