Moving in with the Essefficist

It looks like there's a difference between what the City and County of San Francisco considers a domestic partnership to be and how the State of California (Dig that Kevin Shelley action!) sees it. In the City, any couple who are over eighteen, living together, not related, not married, and not registered in another domestic partnership can march down to City Hall, file a Declaration of Domestic Partnership, hand over $41, and officially become domestic partners. Sacramento, however, is a little pickier. All the criteria in the state's definition of domestic partnership are pretty much the same -- here's the state's declaration form -- except that if the couple is heterosexual, at least one of them has to be at least sixty-two. (What? Sixty-two? We'll get to that particular bit of weirdness in a minute.)

According to California state law, "registered domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law, whether they derive from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, government policies, common law, or any other provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses." So it sounds like if our friend Expecting really doesn't want to marry her boyfriend but wants to get health coverage for him through her work (or, for that matter, be required to pay his bills if he goes broke), the two of them should get in touch with Sacramento and get registered as DPs. But only if one of them is sixty-two or older. Hmm. Something tells us that neither Expecting nor her man is a senior citizen, so where does that leave them? The City didn't have that age limitation, did it? Um, nope. But why?

Whenever we here at the Essefficist find ourselves wondering about how San Francisco's government does its business, we like to check in with our main man at City Hall, Supervisor Chris Daly. So we gave him a ring. As is usually the case when you call the Daly household, Sarah, also known as Mrs. Chris Daly, answered the phone. In the course of chatting away before pestering Chris, it came out that not only had Sarah written a paper on domestic partnership in grad school, but she and Chris had actually been registered DPs for a year before getting married so that Sarah could avail herself of the City's health coverage. (Did we call the right people or what?) The following information comes from our conversation with Sarah, as well as from poring over domestic partnership websites. (By the way, we'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Chris and Sarah once again on the recent birth of their son, Jack. What a kid.)

Basically, the gist of the thing is that San Francisco's DP legislation allows registrants to take advantage of City benefits -- health care, etc. -- if one member of the partnership is a City employee, and also requires that any company or organization doing business with the City extend those same benefits to their employees' registered domestic partners, or at least the same benefits offered to their married employees' spouses. A big part of why San Francisco has domestic partnership registration independent of the state's, by the way, is that that whole sixty-two-years-old thing. Apparently, the City wants to be a little more evenhanded than the state in meting out its equal rights. So if Expecting works for the City or for a business that contracts with the City, still has to pay full price at the movies, wants to get health coverage for her boyfriend, and doesn't want to have to pay his credit card bills if he loses his job, she can forget about that state DP business and file with the City.

So what about that age thing, anyway? We asked Chris about it. He contacted Eric Potashner, who works in the office of State Senator Carole Migden, who, when she was still in the State Assembly, had a hand in creating California's domestic partnership legislation. (The current version of which, Assembly Bill 205, just went into effect on January 1 of this year.) What we got back from Chris was something like this: AB 205 is based on a bill originally introduced by Migden in 1999. The authors of this bill had wanted it to apply to anyone seeking a domestic partnership but the Governor wouldn't sign it, so it was altered to apply to all homosexual couples but to only older straight couples, rather than just any breeders who wanted to shack up but not hitch up. The rationale here was that it allowed previously married people to have a legal alternative to marriage which would allow them the benefits thereof they might seek -- hospital visitation rights, etc. -- but not the attendant hassles (namely the tax and estate planning difficulties created by second and third marriages). Seems the general idea is that since straight people can just get married if they want the state to bestow special status on them, why complicate the matter by giving them a second less traditional but weaker option? Or something like that.

Need more info? Look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here. Or call your lawyer.

Had enough yet? We hope so, since that's all we've got, or at least all we're prepared to give at this point. Sooooo... for even more info on the everyday things going on around you all the time, e-mail your questions about San Francisco or your own exciting life to the Essefficist (or just post 'em in the comments). And remember, forty-seven years in San Francisco equals no World Series rings for the Giants.