The "Everything But Marriage Bill"

Domestic Partnership Bill Draws Fire

It's taken me awhile to write this post, just like it's taken me awhile to read all 110 pages of the actual proposed bill, but that's what I've done and the truth is, it's just hard to know where to start. I'm speaking about this on Wednesday for the ACLU of Washington's Civil Liberties 101 CLE, so in preparation from that, I have given myself a crash course in the new bill, which no one saw until just a few weeks ago.

The summary is this: it's everything but marriage, save that which would conflict with federal law. Since state laws confer 300 or so rights/obligations and federal law confers over 1000 to married couples, it's a safe bet that it probably leaves a few things out and causes a little confusion (to put it mildly). But it must be pretty good if the anti-marriage equality folks are getting involved. Well, at least 150 of them, according to the article.

Without going into detail about all the aspects of the bill just yet, I will note one thing that I found interesting: this bill would make it so you can no longer dissolve domestic partnerships nonjudicially. You have to go through the court. In contrast, the current registry allows you to dissolve the relationship nonjudicially for $50 through a fairly simple administrative procedure depending on the length of the relationship and what's at stake.

So if you are hoping for a simple dissolution of your domestic partnership, and you have no property to speak of nor children and it's all agreed- well, you're out of luck. It's going to be just as hard for you to dissolve your simple domestic partnership as if you were dissolving a marriage. Not only do you have to pay a $250 filing fee, but you have to file some complicated forms and appear for a final hearing. If you have a complicated dissolution with lots of property, you're in luck - having the procedural mechanisms available to you right away without having to go through the trouble of "proving" your quasi-marital relationship, is probably going to make your case less complicated and cost you less.

No one ever anticipates dissolving a relationship, but I think this by itself is one of the most important ramifications of the new bill from a family law perpsective, other than being "everything but marriage."