Benefits

(Unofficial) Summary of Benefits Conferred by NJ’s Domestic Partnership Law

Benefits conferred on all registered same sex domestic partners:

• exemption from state inheritance tax on the same basis as a married spouse. (Note: unlike a married spouse, a deceased person’s estate does not go to a domestic partner by default — there must be a will conveying the property) — This tax exemption can have a truly significant financial impact, and can make the difference, for example, between retaining or losing (due to high inheritance taxes) a shared home after a partner dies.
• visitation rights in hospitals and other medical facilities. (For example, a domestic partner may no longer be denied the right to be with a seriously ill or dying partner in a hospital emergency room.)
• medical decision making rights for an incapacitated partner.
• decision-making rights for disposition of a deceased partner’s body.
• right to a NJ state income tax exemption on the same basis as a legal spouse.
• right to NJ statutory protection against being discriminated against on the basis of being a domestic partner.

In addition, the law:

• requires insurance companies to make domestic partner coverage available to individual policy holders and to business policy holders (i.e., if a business chooses to offer domestic partner benefits to its employees, their insurance company can no longer refuse to make it available, as has often occurred in the past). The law does not require private businesses or local government bodies to offer DP benefits to their employees.

To state government employees registered as same sex domestic partners, the law additionally confers:

Employee partner health and pension benefits on the same basis as for a married spouse (including coverage of children of a domestic partner on the same basis as children of a married spouse — i.e., step-children). NOTE [the bad news]: Under Federal law, the IRS considers the value of the domestic partner benefits you receive (e.g., the cost of premiums paid to an insurance company for the coverage) to be taxable income for the employee (unlike benefits married opposite sex spouses receive, which are tax exempt). Therefore, anyone who signs up for DP health benefits for a partner can expect to pay roughly 30% of the value of those benefits in Federal income taxes and monthly withholding. (The actual amount depends on the value of your coverage and the tax bracket you are in.) This is a federal tax issue and completely out of the control of the state of New Jersey. There is an exception to being taxed only if the employee provides more than 50% of the financial support for the domestic partner, in which case, the partner may qualify as a “dependent” for tax purposes and the benefits may be exempt from federal taxes. For more information, see the following web sites: http://www.hrc.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Work_Life/Get_Informed2/The_Issues/Tax_Implications/Tax_Implications.htm
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