Unmarried Blog

Adoption Ban in Arkansas Recently Struck Down!

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza recently struck down Arkansas’ 2008 adoption ban that prevented same-sex and other unmarried cohabiting couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents.

According to an article published by the Associated Press, “the judge wrote that the law infringed upon a ‘fundamental right.’ Piazza said protecting children is in the state’s interest, but the ban ‘is not narrowly tailored to the least restrictive means necessary to serve the state’s interest in determining what is in the best interest of the child.’”

Smart move, Arkansas! – We have Judge Chris Piazza to thank for that!

European Union for People who Live Alone

National Union of Activists for People who Live Alone: doesn’t that sound great? It sounds even better in French: Union Nationale des Groupes d’Action des Personnes qui Vivent Seules (UNAGRAPS). And it’s for real!

Even if you don’t read French, visit the website for the charming graphics of activists holding banners that say roughly “solo = more expensive,” “fighting for ourselves together,” etc.

UNAGRAPS has 10 local chapters, in all corners of France. It tackles issues of taxation, social security and retirement, succession rights, and some leisure costs like the single supplement. It demands recognition of solo singles as an interest group (apparently not a dirty word in Europe), and won interest group registration under the European Union in August 2009.

As Ulla Anderson, UNAGRAPS’s President, emailed me in English (several communications excerpted and compiled here):

Our pursuit pertains to the difference between single without children (one person household) and married people without children.

French tax is calculated according to number of persons in a household. A one person household has one “part”; a couple without children has two parts. In a majority of situations this leads to higher tax for the single person than for each member of the couple.

It is widely accepted that the French system is particularly unfavourable for single persons as most countries tax couples separately.

[Nonetheless, in] Europe there are [similar singles' rights] associations in … Norway, Finland and Holland. There may be more that I haven’t found yet.

We recently read about singles rights organizations in India. We’re often asked if there are any in Canada, but we haven’t found one. Do you know any other international (or U.S.) organizations working to make laws and economics more fair for singles and unmarried households? Please click Comments to help us get connected!

Hospital visitation rights for everyone? (updated)

Appropriately for National Healthcare Decisions Day, today’s big news is that President Obama issued an executive order instructing hospitals that participate in Medicare or Medicaid to make

clear that designated visitors, including individuals designated by legally valid advance directives (such as durable powers of attorney and health care proxies), should enjoy visitation privileges that are no more restrictive than those that immediate family members enjoy. [And] that participating hospitals may not deny visitation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

Wait, where’s marital / relationship status? Does Obama really mean to say that a close friend or unmarried partner can be kept from a patient’s bedside, if the patient hasn’t completed a legal advance directive (or otherwise designated that person in advance) and as long as the hospital can prove the exclusion wasn’t motivated by race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability?

Have you or anyone you know been kept from visiting a loved one in the hospital because of martial status? Your story must be told! Click here to send your story confidentially to AtMP, or post it for the public to read in the comments section below.

NEW! Read AtMP’s comments on the regulation, and add your support!

Did you get time off to care for your new child?

AtMP has heard from many people who were denied leave from work to care for their ill unmarried partner or to attend the funeral of their unmarried partner’s parent. Now we’re helping our colleagues collect stories about workers who were denied parental leave.

Have you been denied paid parental leave due to your marital status, or for any other reason? If so, please consider sharing your story with Human Rights Watch. This is how they describe their project:

Parental leave with pay when a new child joins the home is an important support for working families, yet most U.S. private sector workers do not have this benefit. In the United States, the national Family and Medical Leave Act requires only unpaid leave. Only two states (California and New Jersey) currently offer paid parental leave, and a handful of others offer temporary disability insurance to birth mothers after childbirth. States that do offer such paid leave generally fund their programs through small payroll deductions into a state-wide insurance fund, minimizing the impact on any particular business.

For the most part, it is up to employers to decide whether to offer this benefit. Some employers, especially larger ones, do so with good results. Other employers would like to, but can’t without the help of a social insurance fund. As of 2008, only 9 percent of civilian U.S. workers had paid family (including parental) leave, and among the lowest-income workers, only 3 percent had such leave. Some workers can apply other paid leave when they have children, such as sick or vacation leave, but such leave is far from universal, especially among low-wage employees. Non-biological parents face additional hurdles in accessing any parental or family leave, even unpaid leave.

Human Rights Watch, a nongovernmental human rights group, is interviewing parents in the U.S., including LGBT parents, about their experiences with unpaid parental leave, and the impact on their families. The interviews will be used for a report (using pseudonyms, not actual names of interviewees) and for making recommendations on U.S. law and policy. Interviews last about 25-30 minutes.

HRW’s Janet Walsh is coordinating the interviews. To spare her email account from being massively spammed, AtMP will forward your information to her. Please click here if you have experienced parental leave with limited or no pay and are willing to be interviewed.

A bit of good news on marital status in health reform

AtMP is seeking volunteers to investigate all the ways that the new health reform law may reduce or increase differences in cost of coverage for married couples, unmarried couples and unmarried individuals. If you can help, please contact us!

We confirmed one piece of good news today: adult children won’t be kicked off their parents’ health plans just because they get married! Over the past few years, many states have required insurance companies to let unmarried adult children stay on their parents’ plans up to a certain age (ranging from 24 to 29), but most states allowed the twenty-somethings’ insurance to be terminated as soon as they got married. This has been a source of poignant entreaties from young lovers barred from the alter by illness. Now, as the New York Times reports,

Starting in September, adult children younger than 26 can be added to their parent’s health policy. Some plans already extend coverage to adult dependents as long as they are full-time students. Although Health and Human Services still must announce the exact eligibility requirements, Congress deleted a restriction related to marital status.

“We may see a loosening of requirements around who qualifies as a dependent child,” said Jennifer Tolbert, associate director of the Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “When they removed the requirement that a dependent child didn’t have to be unmarried, that was a signal to say, ‘We want this to a apply to a larger group.’ ”

This was so unexpected that we actually phoned the Kaiser Family Foundation for confirmation – and got it! KFF’s Chris Lee says that the reconciliation bill does permit married adult children to stay on their parents’ plans (however, it does not allow the adult child’s child (the plan holder’s grandchild) to be on that plan, and probably does not allow coverage the adult child’s spouse either).

Yes you count! share your love with the Census

Have you filled out your Census form? If you’re living with an unmarried partner, be sure to check off the “unmarried partner” box. The more the country continues to see increases in cohabitation, and large numbers of same-sex and different-sex couples living together, the easier it is to argue that our relationships and families need recognition.

The “unmarried partner” box is the 12th out of 14 categories, so it might be missed. Spread the word to your family and friends who have unmarried partners — check the unmarried partner box on the census!

We’re extra happy that the Census is not using the ridiculous “not related” category, that you can see starting on page 2 of the 2000 Census form. Thanks to Marshall for pointing that out!

Who’s in charge here? Could be you!

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, lead by a national board of directors. AtMP’s staff is small, so it’s board does a lot; if it were bigger it could do even more! We’re actively recruiting to grow our volunteer leadership team – click here for more about who’s currently on the board, what we’re looking for, and how to apply.

Examples of what various board members did in recent days: edited a membership email, evaluated listserve hosting technology, educated friends about the role of marital status in immigration policy, made a personal connection with a grant-making foundation, and reached out to potential new board members.

We’re especially seeking strategic thinkers and hands-on achievers who are, of course, 100% committed to the mission. If that’s you, we want to hear from you. If you know the perfect person, please introduce us!

A more personal update on AtMP’s hospital rights initiative

So far, 2010 has been quite an exciting year for me.

I primarily worked on the FHCDA campaign and was thrilled to find out it finally passed, after 17 years! All that hard work paid off. To continue on with AtMP’s focus on hospital rights in NY, I am helping organize presentations at Callen-Lorde and SAGE where Nicky and I will discuss the FHCDA, the importance of advanced directives, NY’s hospital visitation law and broader, nation-wide health policy issues. I’m also honored to report that we’ll be active participants of National Health Care Decisions Day, April 16th!

Be sure to check out our hospital rights page that features an updated map on states’ decision-making policies. Thank you efficient Internet mapping programs!

Hope you all are also enjoying 2010!

-Jessica, AtMP Communications Intern

Don’t like plus-one health benefits? Try minus-one!

In a jaw-dropping demonstration of what happens when institutions value their exclusive notion of marriage over everything else including health care, Catholic Charities of Washington, DC has announced that

Effective tomorrow, its employees will no longer be able to add a spouse to employee health benefit coverage. Spouses who are currently covered will continue to be covered.

Thanks to Professor Nancy Polikoff for bringing this to our attention, and for slamming it as unnecessary as well as cruel.

From an advocacy perspective, maybe there’s a silver lining: if more employers drop benefits for spouses and partners, there will be more couples throwing their political support behind single payer health coverage.

Hospital rights victory in New York

For over 17 years, New York has struggled to attain medical decision making rights for its patients. Not anymore! Just two days ago, New York voted YES on the Family Health Care Decisions Act! It’s been a long time coming!

The FHCDA helps protect people who don’t document their wishes. It gives family members and friends (including broadly defined domestic partners) the authority to make treatment decisions for incapacitated patients who have not signed a health care proxy or left specific oral or written treatment instructions.

Patients in NY now can have someone they love and trust visit them in the hospital make medical decisions for them, without regard to marital status!

For more information, read Governor Paterson’s press release.

Congratulations, New Yorkers!

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