Athens City Council adopted an ordinance last night that will allow citizens to apply for a domestic partnership, which signifies that a non-married couple shares a common residence and responsibility for each other’s common welfare.
To establish a domestic partnership, both individuals must file a declaration with the city affirming that they meet certain qualifications.
Aside from sharing a common residence and taking responsibility for each other’s common welfare, individuals must also not be married to any other individual. Neither party can be in another domestic partnership with another individual as well.
Another stipulation is that applicants must be 18 years old or over and may not be related.
One thing that council stressed, however, is that a domestic partnership is not the same as a civil union, in the sense that individuals involved in a domestic partnership do not receive benefits.
“There are no benefits, it’s more of a symbolic thing,” Councilman Jim Sands said. “It’s possible in the future that the state legislature will create some legal benefits for it, but not at the moment.”
The issue of whether or not benefits for domestic partners may be included in the future begs another issue. Is it possible that individuals could establish fraudulent domestic partnerships in the future just to receive legal benefits?
“If benefits did eventually come down the pipeline, we would have to look into this again,” Sands said.
To declare a domestic partnership, applicants must pay a 25-dollar administrative fee that will go to Paula Horan-Moseley, the Service Safety Director. The responsibility of the Service Safety Director is to coordinate activities of city departments, developers, and city engineering consultants; respond to citizen concerns and issues; and assist the Mayor and department heads in accomplishing objectives.
According to Sands, the administrative fee will allow the Service Safety Director to carry out daily activities.
By allowing same-sex couples to be symbolically recognized as domestic partners, council also stressed that this is not a marriage or legal status. Still, the LGBT community in Athens would like to see progress in the form of partners of city employees receiving partnership benefits.
“There are cities where partners of employees get partnership benefits that usually have to do with insurance,” Sands said. “The LGBT community is asking us to employ this, but at this point we don’t have the language to do this. We have not decided to take that step yet.”
No comments:
Post a Comment