Trust EBIA to provide practical analysis--with full legal support for all conclusions--of the important issues, including:

• Rules regarding same-sex marriage, civil unions, and other relationship recognition. Carefully designed benefit programs require an understanding of the evolving laws in this area. We provide a state by state table of laws with citations and an explanation of the developing rules.
• Drafting effective eligibility provisions. What eligibility criteria should be imposed? Should both same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners be eligible? What affidavits and documentation should be required?
• Identifying benefits to be provided to domestic partners and their children. We provide a framework for surveying benefits and making design decisions, including consideration of state discrimination laws that may directly or indirectly affect decision-making and an explanation of how ERISA preempts many such laws.
• Special issues presented for particular benefits. We deal separately with special compliance issues presented by health benefits (including insurance issues and impacts of COBRA, HIPAA, and other health plan mandates); retirement and pension benefits (including providing for surviving domestic partners and QDROs); and other benefits (including dependent care assistance, adoption assistance, and other fringes).
• Taxation of domestic partner benefits. We provide the details on when domestic partners and their children can qualify as tax dependents for health and other benefits, including use of tax certifications, cafeteria plan administration, special issues for HRAs and HSAs, and withholding and employment tax impacts.

Employee Benefits for Domestic Partners: Design, Taxation, and Administration also includes charts, tables, checklists, and sample documents (including affidavits, tax certifications, and SPD language).