Family Law Rights and Responsibilities

• Access throughout the state to step-parent and joint adoption on the same terms and using the same procedures as apply to different-sex married couples, and the ability to become licensed jointly as foster parents;

• Legal presumption that both partners are parents of children born into the civil union;

• Duties of joint financial support and liability for family debts arising during the relationship;

• Ability to use spousal name change procedures when entering a civil union

• Dissolution of the civil union by a domestic relations court, including access to equitable division of the relationship assets and debts;

• Right to seek maintenance upon dissolution;

• Access to custody, visitation and support orders concerning children upon dissolution;

• Protection for civil union partners and their children under domestic violence, crime victim, and crisis assistance laws; and

• Enforcement of pre-civil union agreements between civil union partners on the same terms as premarital agreements between spouses.

Medical and Death-Related Rights

• Automatic rights of hospital visitation, medical decision-making, and authority to receive information about a partner’s medical condition or treatment;

• Automatic ability to authorize anatomical gifts, autopsy, and release of medical records, and to make funeral arrangements for a deceased partner;

• Right to seek money damages for a partner’s wrongful death, lost financial support and companionship;

• Right to inherit in the absence of a will, and certain financial protections while the estate is being settled;

• Financial protections against the duty to repay public medical and nursing home costs upon death of a partner; and

• Employment-related spousal or family benefits, including spousal health insurance for public employees (although such benefits will still be taxable under federal law as income for
the employee).

Other Rights and Responsibilities

• Right to file joint state income tax returns, and state tax exemption regarding value of partner health insurance;

• Right to hold real property in “tenancy by the entirety” (which offers some protection against creditors);

• Some workplace benefits, including the right to a pension for the surviving civil union partner of a firefighter or police officer, and where work injury causes death, funeral and burial expenses, and death benefits;

• Equal treatment as spouses under certain state insurance laws;

• Right not to testify against civil union partner;

• Right of an incarcerated person to phone a critically ill civil union partner; and

• Veterans’ benefits that are available to spouses under state law

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President Obama has concluded that DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) is unconstitutional. Obama has instructed his administration to no longer enforce the law banning same-sex marriages. Consequently, the Attorney General's Office will cease their defense in two pending cases: one from New York that is pending in the Second Circuit and another from Boston that is in the First Circuit. The decision and directive by President Obama has sparked lots of debate as to the role of the President to enforce laws, which is mandated by the Constitution.

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On June 1, 2011 civil unions will be allowed in the State of Illinois for gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gender couples. This also means that after June 1, 2011, the Illinois Dissolution proceedings will now need to include Civil Unions, but it is still unclear how this is going to be implemented into the Courts.

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