Domestic Partner Healthcare Update

Domestic Partner Update

Effective 7/1/08, Maryland’s Health Care statutes were revised to recognize Domestic Partnerships.  These revisions legislate the rights of domestic partners to visit their partner in a health care facility and elevates domestic partners to the rights of a spouse to act as one’ health care agent. 

This change not only impacts same-sex couples, but unmarried opposite-sex couples who qualify as domestic partners.  Legally, a domestic partnership is a relationship between two people who are not related to each other, are not married or in a civil union or in a domestic partnership with someone else, and who agree to be in a relationship of mutual interdependence in which each contributes to the maintenance and support of the other, although they are not required to contribute equally.