Rights And Responsibilities Of Marriages In The United States
According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are 1,138 statutory provisions in which marital status is a factor in determining benefits, rights, and privileges. These rights and responsibilities apply to only male-female couples, from the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
Prior to the enactment of DOMA, the General Accounting Office (as the GAO was then called) identified 1,049 federal statutory provisions in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status or in which marital status is a factor. An update was published in 2004 by the GAO covering the period between September 21, 1996 (when DOMA was signed into law) and December 31, 2003. The update identified 120 new statutory provisions involving marital status, and 31 statutory provisions involving marital status repealed or amended in such a way as to eliminate marital status as a factor.
See below for a partial list of these provisions of federal law.
Read more about Rights And Responsibilities Of Marriages In The United States: Rights and Benefits, Responsibilities, Ambiguous, States, Legal Remedies Enacted Following The GAO Report
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