John Peck and Molly Stentz obtained a domestic partnership from Dane County in 2014. Last week, they learned they now have other options.
Molly Stentz and her partner, John Peck, opted to get a domestic partnership from the Dane County clerk’s office in 2014 because, at the time, marriage wasn’t legal for everyone in the state of Wisconsin.
They bought a house, moved in together, shared finances and got a dog, but getting married felt wrong when not everyone had the legal right.
“Marriage was a discriminatory institution in our state at the moment,” Stentz says. “Neither of us necessarily wanted state approval of our relationship, but we did have practical reasons [for a legal partnership].”
One of those reasons was health care. After slipping on a patch of ice, Peck broke his wrist. At the time, he didn’t have health insurance.
“It’s one of those moments when you realize how vulnerable you are,” says Stentz, who has contributed to Isthmus. “He was working full time but didn’t have health care through his employer, so after that experience it seemed crazy that he was uninsured.”
In December that year, they went to the clerk’s office, filled out some forms, paid $35 and were officially registered in Dane County as domestic partners.
So when Stentz heard last week that Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell announced he had issued the county’s first domestic partnership to an opposite-sex couple, she was confused. “I knew we had registered our partnership with the county and knew other couples who had as well, so I just didn’t understand what exactly was going on,” Stentz says.
The U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal throughout the country last year. But the path toward legalization created other types of partnerships in Wisconsin. Are they still valid, and for whom?
What Stentz and Peck registered for in 2014 is a domestic partnership that Dane County created a decade ago. The main benefit is that it allows partners to get on each other’s health insurance policies. Dane County is the only county in Wisconsin that has a local ordinance allowing opposite-sex domestic partnerships, according to the county clerk’s office. It was created in 2006 as a way for both same and opposite sex couples to legally be covered on each other’s insurance, McDonell says.
Three years later, then-Gov. Jim Doyle approved a statewide domestic partnership as part of the 2009 biennial budget. But these were available only to same-sex partners.
At that time, Dane County discontinued issuing the domestic partnership it had created for same-sex couples and began offering couples state domestic partnerships because it offered more benefits, including inheritance and survivor protections and various medical, hospital and visitation rights.
To the county, the shift made sense because same-sex couples didn’t yet have the option to marry, which yields even more benefits, like parental rights and joint tax filing.
“Opposite-sex couples had the ability to get married so there wasn’t the same demand or need [for state domestic partnerships],” McDonell says.
But after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples could marry everywhere, suddenly, same-sex couples had more options in Wisconsin than opposite-sex couples.
So on May 13, McDonell announced he would join Milwaukee County in issuing the state’s domestic partnerships to opposite sex couples under the statute Doyle signed into law in 2009. “If you follow the legal logic of the ruling on same-sex marriage, it is clear that opposite-sex couples also have equal protection rights and should also be allowed to apply for and receive state domestic partnerships,” McDonell says in a statement.
There are currently 430 opposite-sex couples on the Dane County domestic partnership registry, including Stentz and Peck. Those couples can now apply for a state domestic partnership if they so choose.
A couple would need to go to the county clerk’s office, fill out new forms and pay a new fee of $120 to get approved for the state domestic partnership registry and receive the expanded benefits. The cost of a state partnership is the same as a marriage license. While marriages offer a few more benefits (like federal tax benefits and parental rights), domestic partnerships can be obtained much quicker and are easier to dissolve.
McDonell says couples can register for both the state and county partnerships if they are concerned about the possibility of an injunction. “I don’t know what the attorney general is planning on doing,” McDonell says. “[A couple] might just get both, hoping the state one is free and clear.”
If the attorney general doesn’t contest counties issuing the state domestic partnership to opposite-sex couples, McDonell says it could mean the end of the county’s registry. "Hopefully we’ll get rid of the county one because it’s so inferior to state one,” he says.
For Stentz and Peck, the extra benefits are worth a trip to the clerk’s office to the state’s partnership — even if it does seem like a bit of a “hassle.”
“That’s just the kind of people we are. Our relationship is our business, we don’t consider it the state’s business, but if they want us to jump through hoops we’ll jump through hoops,” Stentz says.
