New Jersey LGBT Law

This bill, which is designated the Family Equality Act, creates a mechanism, through the establishment of domestic partnerships, for New Jersey to recognize and support the many adult individuals in this State who share an important personal, emotional and committed relationship with another adult. These familial relationships assist the State by establishing a private support network for the financial, physical, and emotional health of their participants. This bill provides the State with the opportunity to recognize the important material and non-economic contributions that individuals in these relationships make to each other, and to the State, by conferring certain rights and benefits, as well as obligations and responsibilities, upon domestic partners.

Currently, a significant number of New Jersey residents live in families in which the heads of household are unmarried. These families include, for example, older couples, same-sex couples, a single parent and adult child, and unmarried adult siblings who share a home together. Despite their interdependence and mutual commitment, these families do not currently have access to the protections and benefits offered by the law to certain other family structures, such as marriage and parent-child relationships; nor do they bear legal obligations to each other, no matter how interdependent their relationship. This bill seeks to redress this oversight and provide certain benefits to, and enforce certain obligations within, these families.

The bill provides that two persons who desire to become domestic partners may execute and file an Affidavit of Domestic Partnership with the local registrar upon payment of a fee, in an amount to be determined by the Commissioner of Health and Senior Services, if they meet all of the following requirements:

• Both persons share a common residence in this State, or share the same place to live in another jurisdiction when at least one of them is a member of a State-administered retirement system;
• Both persons agree to be jointly responsible for each other's basic living expenses during the domestic partnership;
• Neither person is married in a marriage recognized by New Jersey law or a member of another domestic partnership;
• Both persons have chosen to share each other's lives in a committed relationship of mutual caring;
• Both persons are at least 18 years of age;
• Both persons file jointly an Affidavit of Domestic Partnership; and
• Neither person has been a partner in a domestic partnership that was terminated less than 180 days prior to the filing of the current Affidavit of Domestic Partnership, except that this prohibition shall not apply if one of the partners died; and, in all cases in which a person registered a prior domestic partnership, the domestic partnership shall have been terminated in accordance with the provisions of the bill.

The bill would impose civil penalties as follows:

    
• up to $1,000 against a person who executes an Affidavit of Domestic Partnership in violation of its provisions, to be sued for and collected pursuant to the Penalty Enforcement Law of 1999; and
• up to $500 against a local registrar (through an amendment to N.J.S.A.26:8-55) for knowingly submitting a Certificate of Domestic Partnership to the State registrar that contains incorrect particulars (on the same basis as would apply with respect to a birth, marriage or death certificate).

The bill gives the Superior Court jurisdiction over all proceedings relating to the termination of a domestic partnership, including the division and distribution of jointly held property, and requires that the termination follow the same procedures, and the parties be subject to the same substantive rights and obligations, as are involved in an action for divorce.

The bill accords domestic partners rights and responsibilities that reflect the mutually interdependent and supportive nature of domestic partnership relationships. Specifically, the bill provides domestic partners with:

• statutory protection through the Law Against Discrimination (N.J.S.A.10:5-1 et seq.) against various forms of discrimination based on domestic partnership status, including employment, housing and credit discrimination;
• visitation rights for a hospitalized domestic partner and the right to make medical or legal decisions for an incapacitated partner;
• an additional personal exemption under the New Jersey Gross Income Tax Act (N.J.S.A.54A:1-1 et seq.) and an exemption from the transfer inheritance tax on the same basis as a spouse;
• in the case of State employees, eligibility for dependent coverage under the State Health Benefits Program and dependent benefits under State-administered retirement systems (Public Employees' Retirement System, Police and Firemen's Retirement System, Judicial Retirement System, Teachers' Pension and Annuity Fund, and State Police Retirement System);
• in the case of other public employees, including employees of counties, municipalities and boards of education, eligibility for dependent coverage under the State Health Benefits Program and State-administered retirement systems, if the employer adopts a resolution providing for such coverage; and
• eligibility for dependent coverage under health insurance contracts and policies that commercial health and dental insurers are required to offer to covered persons under the bill, although an employer may require a person covered by the employer's health benefits plan to assume a portion or the full amount of the cost of coverage for that person's domestic partner.

Finally, the bill recognizes that while individuals in domestic partnerships share some of the same emotional and financial bonds and other indicia of interdependence as married couples, domestic partnership is a status distinct from marriage. The bill draws two chief legal distinctions to reflect the continuing difference between the two statuses:

1. property acquired by one partner during a domestic partnership is treated as the property of that individual, unlike in a marriage where joint ownership may arise by law; and
2. the status of domestic partnership neither creates nor diminishes individual partners' rights and responsibilities toward children, unlike in a marriage where both spouses possess legal rights and obligations with respect to any children born during the marriage.