A civil union is a legal union between two adults who wish to share their lives in a loving and committed relationship of mutual caring, as outlined in California Family Code Section 297. A civil union provides state-level rights and responsibilities similar to those of married spouses, but is essentially separate under federal law.
This blog examines the primary distinctions between civil unions and marriage, with a focus on California. It provides a strategic roadmap for couples navigating these options. This discussion will focus on state-level parity, federal benefits gaps, and the mobility of these unions throughout the United States.
The discussion is based on the development of California Family Code Section 297.1 and federal precedents introduced as a result of Obergefell v. Hodges. Such subtleties are crucial for safeguarding your property, tax status, and immigration privileges in an increasingly complex and evolving legal landscape.
Similarities Between Civil Unions and Marriages
By deciding to form a civil union in California, you are getting into a legal structure that is deliberately made by the state legislature to be the functional equivalent of marriage. According to the California Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act, the state requires persons in civil unions, such as same-sex couples, to have rights, protections, and benefits that are received and enforced in the same manner as those afforded to married spouses.
Therefore, in almost all your dealings with the state government or a state-controlled organization, the fact that you are a domestic partner does not show any difference compared to a husband or a wife. The state-level tax benefits are to be given to you, and you are to be subject to the same community property provisions as all other legal unions in the state.
This degree of equality is exceptional in California and a few other progressive jurisdictions. Here, you are guaranteed legal equality, which will secure your domestic rights irrespective of the exact title you adopt to characterize your relationship.
Shared Financial Liability and Community Property
The immediate enforcement of community property laws is among the most significant legal implications of entering into either a marriage or a civil union in California. Since the time you have formed your partnership or even solemnized your marriage, any income realized and assets accumulated by any of the parties are usually deemed as the joint property of both of you.
This joint property also applies to your house, your cars, and even your pension plans. On the other hand, you also have to share the debt liability, specifically credit card balances or loans borrowed in the union process, which is commonly the liability of the two partners. When you sit before a professional and discuss your future in terms of finances, you will realize that there is no differentiation between these two statuses based on California community property laws.
Being a spouse or domestic partner, the state views your financial life as a combined entity. This gives you a substantial degree of security throughout the relationship, but also makes it difficult to do so in case you choose to part ways.
Healthcare Advocacy and Medical Decision-Making
Your right to defend your partner in the event of a medical emergency is a fundamental right that marriage and domestic partnerships guarantee to you, according to California law. You automatically become the legal next-of-kin of your partner. You, therefore, are entitled to unquestionable access to your partner at the hospital, and you have the right to make critical medical decisions should your partner fall into an incapacitated state.
Within the San Diego healthcare systems, you will discover that medical practitioners have been conditioned to treat the certificate of civil union with equal importance to the marriage license. You do not even need to carry a separate power of attorney for healthcare so that someone can ensure you are heard in an emergency room.
Moreover, you can utilize the California Family Rights Act to be out of employment to attend to a partner who is ill with a serious health condition. This legal status will ensure that you are not viewed as an outsider to the one you love most in times when they are at their lowest point of need.
Presumption of Right of Parentage and of Inheritance
Once you have children in your union, the legal subtleties of your relationship become even more urgent. This is encouraging, as California law grants the marital presumption of parentage to married couples, as well as registered domestic partners.
This implies that in case your partner gives birth to a child in a civil union, you are automatically assumed to be the other parent from the time of birth. Your name is also on the birth certificate, of course. You have all the parental rights and duties as a married parent, such as the responsibility to contribute to child support and the right to demand custody or visitation in case the relationship is broken.
According to a California family court, there exists no difference between the legality of a child who is born in a marriage and one who is born in a domestic partnership, so that your family unit will be secured within the borders of the state.
California also provides that your right to inheritance is not violated, despite being married or in a civil union. In case your partner dies without a will, the intestate succession laws give you the same priority as a surviving spouse. You can receive community property and a substantial part of separate property, which offers an essential financial security net in times of sorrow.
Such state-level acknowledgement is your right to sue for wrongful death or emotional distress in case a third party injures your partner. Formalizing your union in San Diego means assuring the state that your dedication is considered a legally binding contract that deserves the utmost protection and respect. However, you are not just roommates or longtime friends; you are a legal family unit recognized by the California Superior Court.
The Difference between a Civil Union and Marriage
California cannot give you the right that is prohibited under federal law. Although you may feel absolutely equal as a married couple, you lose that equality as soon as you meet with a federal agency. Marriage is accepted at both the national and federal levels, which means that you can enjoy more than 1,000 federal protections and benefits that are not accessible to those in a domestic partnership.
This is the primary reason that leads most couples to finally decide to transform their domestic relationship into marriage due to this federal divide. You should weigh the comfort of a domestic partnership against the long-term financial and legal security that comes with federal recognition. To people whose retirement or immigration is dependent on the federal system, or who have planned their taxes, the domestic partnership may seem like a house whose foundation ceases at the state line.
IRS Discrepancies and Federal Tax Filings
The nature of your financial relationship with the Internal Revenue Service is not the same when you are married and when you are in a domestic partnership. You must understand that the IRS does not recognize domestic partnerships in California as marriages for federal income tax purposes.
This is because, although you must file as married on your California state returns, you must file as single or head of household on your federal returns. This inconsistency incurs a high administrative cost, as you will need to prepare two sets of financial statements each April. You are not able to exploit the joint filing status, which usually lowers the overall tax liability of married people, and you can hardly transfer any unlimited assets to your partner without attracting the possible gift tax effect.
The most aggravating, perhaps, is the question of imputed income, where employer-provided health insurance of a domestic partner is typically considered taxable income by the federal government. Still, the identical benefits of a spouse are tax-free.
The Retirement Security and Social Security Gaps
The federal gap in Social Security benefits should be of primary concern if you are heading into your retirement years. The Social Security Administration offers a diverse range of spousal and survivor benefits, which have a strictly defined definition of a legal marriage.
In the case of the death of a married individual, the remaining spouse is usually allowed to get a part of the deceased's benefits, which is a much-needed financial lifeline. Being a registered domestic partner, you are generally not eligible for these federal survivor benefits, which could cost you thousands of dollars of annual income in your old age.
This is a very delicate matter among the seniors and retirees aged sixty-two years and above. Although some seniors opt for domestic relationships due to the marriage penalty, which could result in them losing their current pensions or survivor benefits from a former spouse, others feel that the absence of new spousal benefits exposes them to an unhealthy level of financial insecurity.
Immigration Status and Spousal Sponsorship
In cases involving a couple where one of the marital partners is a non-citizen, the distinction between marriage and domestic partnership is a matter of national residency. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has acknowledged legal marriage as the sole basis for the spousal green card or visa petition.
In the case of a domestic partnership, you cannot sponsor your partner to receive immigration benefits, since the federal law does not consider you a spouse. This may create devastating circumstances where the state of California officially accepts a couple. However, federal law continues to segregate them across international boundaries or expose them to the risk of deportation.
When you consider that your future includes a spousal visa or a road to citizenship, you must consider marriage as the only legal choice. The lack of recognition of domestic partnerships in the immigration process by the federal government is one of the most severe and painful challenges for international couples residing in San Diego now.
The Risks of Interstate Portability
You may not necessarily have California as the center of your life. Marriage has the advantage of portability. That means it is a legal status that is recognized in all other states in the US and most countries worldwide. Due to the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the later federal decisions, a marriage ceremony conducted in San Diego will still be a marriage should you relocate to Texas, Florida, or any other jurisdiction.
The same thing cannot be said about your domestic partnership. You bear a legal position that is attached to a particular geographical area. When you relocate to a state with no domestic partnership or civil union law, your union can be considered a mere personal agreement between two individuals who do not know each other.
Your right to make medical choices may be taken away, your community property rights may be lost, and other members of your family may successfully contest your inheritance rights.
The Difference Between Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships
The legal context of the United States tends to use the terms "civil union" and "domestic partnership" interchangeably; however, they signify the statutory framework of various states. The state of California does not refer to the concept of civil union in its legal documents. Instead, the state calls a legal relationship in which the same rights are granted at the state level as marriage or civil union.
In some other states, such as Hawaii or Illinois, civil unions were mainly used to recognize the relationship before the legalization of same-sex marriage, which was introduced nationwide. To you, as a resident of San Diego, the civil union is your form of civil union, and it comes with the protection of California's strong family law. Although the names are not the same, the purpose is the same: to provide a legal alternative for couples who are not willing to enter into a traditional marriage.
Legislative Expansion of All Couples
On January 1, 2020, a significant change in California law took place with the adoption of Senate Bill 30. In the past, domestic partnerships were limited only to same-sex couples or opposite-sex couples with at least one of the partners having attained the age of sixty-two years or above. This was the age limit, meant initially to protect the social security benefits of the seniors against a former marriage.
However, the 2020 expansion has made it possible for all couples, irrespective of their age or gender, to decide on a domestic partnership instead of a marriage. This translates to the fact that, as a young couple in San Diego, you may want to shun the historical or religious overtones of marriage; you now have access to virtually all the same legal protections under a civil union.
This legislative amendment has brought domestic partnerships into the modern world, as they have not only become a flexible instrument in the hands of a much larger portion of the population but also made them more dynamic.
Reducing The Widow Penalty On Seniors
In most cases, marriage and a civil union are strategic financial plays for many seniors in San Diego and not necessarily love affairs. The survivor benefits, or a pension you may be currently receiving that is based on you not being married, are owed to a former deceased spouse.
According to the federal social security regulations, when you legally remarry, you should not receive such survivor benefits, and you might lose a considerable portion of your monthly earnings. This has been commonly known as the widow's penalty.
You can, in effect, obtain the state-level benefits you require, including the right to inherit the California home of your new partner and the authority to make their medical choices, without causing your current survivor benefits to be terminated by the federal government, by choosing to enter into a California civil union rather than legal marriage. This will enable you to stay financially independent and legalize your relationship with a new partner according to the California legal system.
However, this is a two-edged sword.
- On the one hand, you are safeguarding the benefits gained in a former marriage
- On the other hand, you are losing the possibility to gain federal spousal benefits depending on the income of your present partner
There is no one there who can really say that they are gambling when they consider that they have a current partner. He is the breadwinner or has a much superior history of Social Security contributions than you may otherwise get in a new marriage.
Moreover, in case you and your new partner leave California, the state-level protections that contribute to the appeal of the civil union will not be guaranteed. You need to do a thorough cost-benefit discussion with a family law lawyer and a financial planner so that your decision to stay in a civil union can actually be in your long-term economic interest. You must not expose yourself to loss of support in the event of the death of your current partner or simply a breakup of the relationship.
Protecting Parental Rights Interstate
Although there is security of a civil union on the state level, there are significant risks of travelling or moving to a state that does not acknowledge your California domestic partnership. If you are not the biological parent of your child, then your parenting rights are practically invisible to federal authorities and to non-progressive states, which do not recognize the marital presumption in non-married couples.
To secure your family, you need to look at either a confirmatory adoption or a second-parent adoption, even though your name already appears on the birth certificate. A court-ordered decree that a person adopts is a legal decision that should be accepted by all states under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution.
You would not have this additional level of protection, and in the event you have an emergency, your parental rights could be called into question in a state that does not recognize your status. Through marriage, the recognition of parenting is a smoother way across borders. However, even married same-sex couples tend to adopt measures to make their rights unconditional, not depending on their geographical location.
Consult a San Diego Family Law Attorney Near Me
The laws governing relationships in California are not as straightforward. The choices you make today will impact your property, taxes, and parental rights in the next few years, whether you are considering a civil union as a means to preserve your financial independence or enjoy the full rights and protections of the federal government as a married person.
At San Diego Family Law Attorney, we help couples understand the complexities of trade-offs between civil unions and marriage under California's continually evolving statutes. We offer the clarity you need to secure your assets and protect your family's security. Contact us at 619-610-7425 to arrange a meeting with our family law attorneys to help you make informed decisions that will best serve your life.
