MSBA committees, sections to look at rights for unmarried couples 

Posted: 1:00 am Mon, July 6, 2009
By Barbara L. Jones

The Minnesota State Bar Association took a small step toward addressing the issue of equal rights for unmarried couples at its convention last month.

While the Assembly did not endorse any legislative proposals at that time, it received the executive summary of the Unmarried Couples Task Force along with the understanding that its recommendations for legislative action will proceed through the appropriate sections and other interested groups.

The task force was created in 2008 to review the current state of Minnesota law and to recommend desirable changes in the law, if any. It has recommended approximately 25 changes in family, medical assistance, probate, employment, insurance, criminal and other areas of the law.

The task force drew on the work of Project 515, a nonprofit organization that issued a report identifying 515 ways Minnesota laws discriminate against couples and families. The task force report is available on the MSBA website, www.mnbar.org.

“The legislative amendments recommended herein are priority areas that are critical to ensuring Minnesota’s legal system recognizes the very real fact that committed couples exist outside the state institution of marriage. Failing to recognize this simple fact results in a disservice to our fellow Minnesotans, who rely on Minnesota law for various legal rights and protections,” the executive summary states.

But the recommended amendments are not comprehensive. “[T]his report only scratches the surface of laws that discriminate based on marital status,” it states.

Minneapolis attorney David Ahlvers, co-chair of the task force, said that the MSBA action is consistent with the task force’s roadmap. The next step is to vet the various proposals out to the appropriate sections for legislative support, he said.

The task force’s family law subcommittee identified four areas where disparities exist, and said such disparities could be decreased by the following changes:

• allowing unmarried couples to bring claims for real or personal property together with custody or paternity proceedings;

• allowing unmarried couples as interested third parties in custody proceedings;

• allowing unmarried couples rights to children’s records; and

• clarifying individuals’ rights and responsibilities in the area of assisted reproductive technology.

The medical assistance subcommittee said that in that area of law, it would be equitable to include all people who are in a domestic partnership within the definition of spouse thereby subjecting domestic partnerships and married couples to the same rights and responsibilities under the code.

The probate subcommittee that observed “inequities are pervasive throughout the probate laws.”

The subcommittee recommended that domestic partners:

• be added to the definitions of “heir” and “interested persons” to give parity status to surviving partners;

• be afforded the same protections and preferential treatments as surviving spouses;

• be afforded the same priority as “spouse” for the purpose of appointment as guardian and/or conservator of an incapacitated or incompetent partner; and

• be afforded the same priority as spouse for the purpose of consenting to anatomical gifts.

The labor and employment subcommittee wrote that the most significant disparity in Minnesota labor and employment law is a failure to provide unmarried employees in domestic partner relationships with the same earned employment benefits that are provided to employees who are married. (Legislation to provide domestic partner health benefits to state employees failed to pass the last session.)