I rented a car once in the US in my name. I was with my partner and I asked if we both needed to show our licences to drive the car. "Are you married?", I was asked. This sounded a rather personal question to an Australian. However, for married couples, the partner did not need to show their licence!
There are not many situations where de facto relationships are treated differently to marriage in Australia. This is not the case in the US.
In fact the term "de facto" is not used in the States at all. (As I type this, my American spell checker underlines those words in red as misspelled words!)
Insurance forms, car rentals, hotel bookings, etc, all assume that if you are together you will be married. You won't see terms like "partner".
When a couple puts in a joint tax return, they put it in as "Married, filling jointly". Quite different from Australia, where "partner" is used (e.g. on the Family Tax Benefit website) to cover both married and de facto couples. The ATO uses "spouse", but defines it to include de factos.
A bigger effect is getting a Visa. Australians can get an employee sponsored E3 visa to live and work in the States. This is better than the H1B visa given to other foreigners because your husband or wife is allowed get an E3D visa and work in any occupation. But if your are de facto, they can't get an E3D. You have to actually have a marriage certificate.
No comments:
Post a Comment