Love Makes A Family
legal rights of same-gender couples in Hawai'i
that are available under the "reciprocal beneficiary" status

Same-gender couples and their families have stood witness to the proposition that love can conquer bigotry. In Hawai'i their peaceful struggle has brought some very real successes, with more to come.

In 1997 Hawai'i adopted a body of legislation granting equal rights to same-gender couples and their families in most areas of the law. Additional rights have been granted since then, and more are expected in the future.

For the first time, these laws have had the effect of legally recognizing same-gender families, including in-laws. Where the rights of same-gender and different-gender couples, spouses, and families in Hawai'i still differ is in other laws not summarized here.

The first group of the new equal-rights laws are those that grant rights and benefits that are quite important but are generally intangible in value. They are of great emotional value, and at times they also have economic value. Examples of these benefits are the equal right with different-gender couples to be able to visit your spouse in a hospital or make medical decisions when necessary.

Simply being recognized as a legal couple is perhaps the most important of the new benefits in this category. As the Hawai'i legislative staff has written, the 1997 Act "provides certain rights and benefits, and represents a commitment to provide substantially similar government rights to those couples who are [still] barred by law from marriage."

A second group of the new laws are those that carry substantial tangible value. Some of the categories in this group are:

• Equal inheritance rights. The inheritance law (known as the probate code) has traditionally granted top inheritance rights to different-gender spouses. Now, in Hawai'i, those rights are equally given to same-gender spouses.
• Couple and family health insurance must now be offered with equal discounts to same-gender couples and their families. Equal coverage also exists in some areas of the State-administered federal Medicaid health program.
• Other limited insurance benefits exist, such as discounts to public workers, their same-gender spouse and their family members, for long-term-care insurance. Or discounts for a person's same-gender spouse and their family members for some types of insurance, and a general equality of benefits for same-gender couples.
• General equality for many areas of retirement benefits. Pension payments for surviving same-gender spouses of retired public workers are now equal. Health and hospital benefits for retired public workers and their same-gender spouses, including surviving spouses after the death of the worker, are now equal. The same with death payments to spouse and family when public workers die while still employed.  The public-worker equal rights also stand, in Hawai'i, as a leading example to the private sector to grant equal pension and death benefits.
• Equality for private employees, their same-gender spouses, and their families under the Workers' Comp system of benefits paid for disabling accidents or death on the job.
• Wrongful death lawsuits.  In addition to any criminal action taken by the government against those responsible for a person's death, a surviving different-gender spouse has always had a special right to sue the guilty parties and attempt to make them pay for the loss of their loved one. Now this right is granted equally to same-gender spouses.
• Savings in "Creating the Relationship." Same-gender couples used to have to spend thousands of dollars on legal bills attempting to create documents and agreements between themselves that partially recreated the rights granted for free to different-gender couples. Most of those costs have now been eliminated through the equalization of so many rights.
• Estate ("death") taxes and related matters. Traditionally these laws have discriminated against same-gender spouses. Through amendments to the inheritance laws, above, it appears that this discrimination has been eased a bit, although full equality still has to be passed.
• "Tenancy by the entirety" is one of several ways that a couple is allowed to own property. It allows special real estate tax, and other benefits. Traditionally open only to different-gender couples in a small number of states, including Hawai'i, now this system has been opened to same-gender couples in Hawai'i.  Remarkably, same-gender couples in Hawai'i therefore now have these specific rights that are in excess of the rights granted to different-gender couples from states not allowing for "tenancy by the entirety."

A third and final group of the new laws are those that grant rights of a more general nature. These laws involve a large number of rights that are of limited economic value when applied singly to a same-gender couple, but when grouped together add up to a major benefit.

For example, one of these rights is that if a public employee dies, then payment is made for any vacation time that may have been saved up but not used. The payment goes to whomever the employee had named. In many cases, however, no eligible person had been named. In those cases, the payment goes to the worker's spouse. The law now grants this right equally to same-gender spouses.

For more information, go to https://members.tripod.com/~MPHAWAII/