Domestic partnerships are recognized in New York in a number of ways and by a number of institutions.
When the private sector recognizes domestic partners, it usually does so by granting employee benefits such as health insurance and bereavement and other kinds of leave. Today, just less than half (49%) of the Fortune 500 corporations nationwide offer domestic partner benefits to their employees. As helpful as these benefits are, their value is considered income to couples who take advantage of them and are thus subject to state and federal tax, unlike spousal coverage which is exempt from taxation.
Governments can recognize domestic partnerships by: 1) granting these same benefits to public employees; 2) establishing domestic partner registries either with or without substantive rights; and/or 3) requiring contractors to offer domestic partner benefits to their employees.
A number of New York localities establish a mechanism for couples, both opposite-sex and same-sex, to register their relationships as domestic partnerships, including the city of Albany, town of Ithaca, town of East Hampton, town of Southampton, town of Southold, town of Huntington, city of New York, city of Rochester, county of Suffolk and county of Westchester. Some of these registries have concrete rights attached to them. New York City, for example, treats domestic partners as spouses for all city purposes (vendors licenses, visitation in NYC's prisons, etc.). When it was created, Westchester was significant as the only registry in the state and perhaps the nation to afford rights against private actors by requiring all hospitals and nursing homes in the county to give visitation to domestic partners on the same basis as spouses. (This right has since been extended to domestic partners statewide under state law.) Other registries have little to no legal value other than their symbolism and their ability to serve as some objective evidence (though not necessarily binding evidence) of the intent to form a legal relationship between two partners.
A number of New York localities offer domestic partner health benefits to public sector employees sometimes in conjunction with a registry and sometimes not. These localities include the city of Albany (registry), town of Ithaca (registry), 5 boroughs of New York City (registry), city of Rochester (registry), town of Greenburgh (no registry), village of Port Jefferson (no registry), Westchester County (registry), Nassau County (no registry), Rockland County (no registry), Suffolk County (registry) and Ulster County (no registry). Localities with no registries often use an application form for establishing a domestic partner relationship. The forms are very similar to those used for years by private sector employers that provide domestic partner benefits to their employees. There are also several dozen school districts around the state that provide domestic partner benefits, such as the Rochester school district which added benefits in 2004.
Although it does not yet have a domestic partner registry, the State of New York has recognized domestic partners in some significant ways. All New York State employees receive domestic partner benefits. Every piece of relief created by New York State government for 9/11 survivors was fully inclusive of domestic partners, in many cases explicitly treating them identical to spouses. The state also guarantees domestic partners hospital and nursing home visitation privileges equal to spouses and legal authority equal to spouses to control a loved one’s bodily remains. The definition of domestic partners in state law is spelt out in statue and includes: people who have registered as domestic partners in a locality or another state; a person who is a beneficiary of another person’s employment benefits or health insurance; or two people who based on a totality of the circumstances are mutually interdependent on each other for support as evidenced through things like joint ownership of property, common householding, shared expenses, joint custody of children or the length of the personal relationship.