Of course, common law marriages are recognized, but doesn’t the state have to have some kind of evidence that the couple has been together for the required number of years? Now that I think of it, how do they know? Does the couple have to prove it somehow?
I, on the other hand, would love to see marriage legally derecognized.
Yes. It depends on the jurisdiction and the context, but they’ve got to establish, when it becomes relevant:
That’s a typical list of requirements.
Yes, of course, there’s some sort of evidence to indicate a legal relationship has been created. It’s going to vary by state, and for a common law marriage, could be as little as the couple consistently presenting themselves to the outside world as married. Other evidence could be living together, having joint accounts, filing joint tax returns, sworn affidavits/testimony of the couple, etc.
But that’s typical of any number of legal relationships. There are any number of lines of evidence (including the statements of the participants) which can be used to establish the relationship.
Gfactor & BrightNShiny, thanks for your answers. It sounds to me, if I’m getting this, that usually the situation has to be that you have to consider yourselves married, for all intents and purposes, and that some kind of legal paperwork has to be in evidence (like the joint tax return). I think that this does make the “piece of paper” a technicality, since you have other “pieces of paper” that indicate your intent. So, the state DOES have some record of your committment. I think that was my basic point…that the state doesn’t know you from Adam, so you have to have some kind of record that shows your committment. Giving benefits for a common-law spouse, then, doesn’t seem to be quite the same thing as for just any unmarried couple.
Companies provide benefits to partners also, to the same extent as if they were married, and as far as I know the statement of the employee of the relationship is adequate. As far as benefits go, if the job comes with “spousal” benefits, does anyone lose by the benefits going to someone not the spouse? If certification is required, should it be anything more than the same address?
As far as I can tell, benefits to partners just hasn’t been a problem, except to the moralists.
Not quite. Saying that the state will accept evidence for a “commitment,” is not the same as saying that the state keeps a record of that commitment. These are 2 distinct concepts. The tax return is a record of the income tax you claim you owe - it’s not a marriage record. But a state may accept this, along with other evidence, to show that a marriage exists.
In any case, every company or organization that offers DP benefits that I’m aware of has some procedure for establishing that someone is a domestic parter. Just as one can use various lines of evidence to establish a marriage, there will be some set of evidence that a company will accept to establish a DP relationship. It could be as little as a person’s own statement, but it will be something.
I was questioning the statment Anaamika made, that a long-term relationship like hers should be recognized, even if shorter-term ones aren’t. My question was, how would the state differentiate between the two? If you give to one DP relationship, I think you have to include all of them.
Should they be distinguished? When people move in together, isn’t that a sign that there is the potential for a long term relationship? I’ve known people who’ve gotten married after a ridiculously short period of dating, and it’s worked out fine. Do you distinguish between long engagements and short ones? Do you only give benefits to spouses after six months, so we don’t get the Spears effect?
I guiess the question is how intrusive should a government or employer be in digging into someone’s personal life in order to qualify them for benefits? People, same sex or different sex, can be roommates for a long time. I know there is the opportunity for people claiming benefits who don’t deserve them, but is the prevention of this worth the company requiring proof that there is sex involved? Does it make sense for an HR department to become like INS?
Too cold in Michigan for the Spears effect. Cold wind blows up the skirt & all… Just sayin’… 
Wasn’t Bricker poo-pooing this as being an concern with anti-gay marriage amendments not even a few months ago?
Sounds about right. In my experience, the people driving these anti-marriage movements tend to be deeply dishonest. They’re more than willing to mouth whatever lie is necessary to drum up the support necessary to pass their legislation. I don’t for a minute believe that this was any sort of “unintended consequence” of the amendment. This was a deliberate use of homophobia as a stalking horse for an assault on the sexual freedom of everyone, not just the queers. These are the same people who wanted to ban the HPV vaccine, because it was better to let girls die a horrible, lingering death by cervical cancer than to “encourage” promiscuity by dispensing a cheap, reliable preventative for a common sexually transmitted virus. They’re amoral scum, is all, trying to peddle their sick control fetish off as “Christian” morality.
No…that’s my point. I am not arguing against DP benefits whatsoever…I think a person should be able to get benefits for any one other person who is contributing to their household. For instance, if my husband died, and my sister and I decided she should move in with me to help me with my kids, then I should be able to extend the benefits to her. That’s my entire point…the state SHOULDN’T be in the business of deciding whose relationship is “important” enough. My point with Anaamikia was just that if you don’t have that piece of paper, you can’t expect the state to be able to figure out who has the legitimate committment and who doesn’t…they need a much more broad-brush way to define it.
I don’t really see any other way to understand what they’ve said. They said, this isn’t about benefits, it’s about gay marriage. And then they turned around and said it should have been obvious that the statute, which they helped draft, btw, clearly did exactly what they said it didn’t do. The aren’t even suggesting that this was an unintended consequence. To me it looks like: “Thanks for the votes, suckers!”
Excuse me!? I’m totally stunned by this display of ignorance.
You’ve heard those promises in the Christian marriage ceremony, ‘… for better or for worse; for richer or for poorer; until death you do part’? What do you suppose they mean? Something other than commitment?
No. I was pooh-poohing the claim that domestic violence victims would be helpless because opponents of the law claimed it would force the state to treat all unmarried domestic violence victims as non-victims.
In fact, I was toying with the idea of starting a thread asking all those who were advancing such an idea to step up and point to a case where an unmarried victim of domestic violence was disadvantaged by the new laws, anywhere.
If you have any examples of that, I’m all ears. (Or eyes, I suppose, this being a text-based medium).
It looks like the matter is on reserve in Ohio’s Supreme Court, according to this article:
So it’s wait and see, I guess.
To clarify my last post, I think these kinds of benefits are very discriminatory towards single people in general. When I was single, I don’t recall anyone offering me a benefit to replace the ones I couldn’t take advantage of because I was single.
Pretty much. I think a few journalists have noticed, too.
That said, I wonder if their being honest about the consequences would have changed the way the vote went. I doubt it. We’d have less teeth-gnashing about the lying and deception, but the same outcome.
“The ceremony legally recognizes a commitment which already exists” means: If a couple is truly committed to each other, they’ll stay together and support one another regardless of whether they’ve gone through a ceremony and gotten a piece of paper. If a couple is not truly committed, a ceremony and documentation will not keep them together. (Britney Spears.) Thus, the ceremony/paperwork really has very little to do with commitment.