CALIF. DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP LAW: Michael Triplett replies to Elizabeth Marquardt

Under the statute, registered domestic partners will both be the legal parents of children born into their households for children born after Jan. 1, 2005. Thus, lesbians who use IVF or gay men who use a surrogate will both be the legal parents because there is no legal biological parent in that situation since the donors forfeit their parental rights by acting as sperm donors or surrogates.

Your comment about interdependence is interesting because part of my legal practice is helping same-sex couples separate. One of the biggest challenges is getting them to view the money and assets as "ours" not "mine" and "yours." When mediating such situations or providing legal advice, I generally tell them to think of it as a legal fiction that they are married and we will approach this like a divorce. In my experience, there is usually significant dependence in same-sex couples since many involve one partner with signficant assets and one with fewer. It's rare that I see couples who are equal.

I think the apprehension and why interdependence doesn't happen in these situations is that there is no legal mechanism protecting them. Marriage (and divorce) protects the partner who has less. Without those kinds of legal mechanisms, however, the dependent partner always lives with the threat of being tossed out with nothing (which happens often).

It would be interesting to see if co-habiting heterosexual couples have the same level of financial interdependence as married couples or the independence of same-sex couples? I also wonder if being divorced (or widowed) impacts the level of interdependence in a married couple.

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posted by Eve at 3:34 PM | link

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