On Monday, the agency announced to employees that they would no longer be eligible to receive benefits covering legally married spouses, according to The Washington Post. The move took effect Tuesday, one day before the district expects to begin offering marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Last month, Catholic Charities handed over the reins of its foster care program to another provider in protest over the gay marriage decision by the D.C. City Council. The charity receives $22 million in funding from the city to run social service programs.

“We looked at all the options and implications,” the charity’s president, Edward J. Orzechowski, told the Post. “This allows us to continue providing services, comply with the city’s new requirements and remain faithful to the church’s teaching.” He doesn’t expect further cuts.

The state House passed the bill on a 34-30 vote on Tuesday.  It had already passed the Senate.

Under the legislation the state employee would have to be in a committed relationship for at least a year.  

Workers had been lobbying for the provision for several years but was fought by Republicans who argued it violated a 2006 referendum that defines marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

GOP lawmakers also claimed it would cost too much and was discriminatory because it does not apply to unmarried opposite-sex couples who live together.

The plan is expected to cost about $150,000 a year and will go into effect in July.

Earlier this month Ritter signed a domestic partner bill making it easier for unmarried couples to make medical decision for incapacitated partners and leave property to their partners.

The measure would apply to same and opposite-sex unmarried couples.

The Designated Beneficiary Agreement Act was passed last month in the state House of Representatives and the Senate.

The law will permit any two people – regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity – to enter into designated beneficiary agreements that confer specific legal rights and responsibilities, including the right to receive state employee pension benefits, the right to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner, and the right to inherit if a partner dies without a will.

Stagg Elliott found out she would be taxed on the portion of Shoffner’s coverage paid for by the employer. She estimated that the coverage represents about $100 worth of monthly income, meaning she has to declare about $1,200 more in income each year than a straight married colleague with an equivalent insurance package.

“It’s still cheaper than COBRA or an individual policy for my wife, but the bottom line is that it’s unequal pay for the same amount of work,” Stagg Elliott said.

For gay and lesbian couples, aggregate costs of living together without government-recognized marriages often becomes all too apparent at tax time.

There are well over 1,000 benefits afforded to Americans on the basis of marital status. Many of these benefits determine your bill at tax time. In the eyes of the federal government, gay and lesbians are entitled to none.

Last week, Mary Ritchie, a Massachusetts State Police trooper, was among more than a dozen plaintiffs suing the federal government on the grounds that the Defense of Marriage Act denies them Federal Benefits that other couples receive. Ritchie told the Associated Press that, while they’ve been a couple, she and her spouse paid over $15,000 more in taxes than they would have had to had they been able to file jointly.

Mt. Prospect, Ill.-based tax practitioner Michael Simon said that gay couples absolutely have to hire a competent tax professional to work around the difficulties inherent in the tax code. A good tax planner, he added, should be able to save couples money in ways that offset these annual penalties.

When Simon prepares returns for same-sex couples wherein the partners have extremely disparate incomes, for example, he suggests the partner with the higher income file as a head of household and claim the other partner as a dependent. According to the IRS, a person can do that if someone in their household makes less than the standard deduction, among several other qualifications they must meet.

“We usually check the box as ‘friend’ or ‘other,’” Simon said. He added that the best advice for anyone, gay or straight, at tax time is to use a professional preparer. “A good tax professional will save you more than the fee they charge.” According to Simon, the inequities gays and lesbians face at tax time, while significant, pale next to other financial challenges they face, such as those associated with buying property together or working around inheritance taxes.

“The people that I’ve worked with are not that disadvantaged by these (income tax) inequalities,” Simon said. “The IRS has definitely narrowed the advantages of filing as (an opposite-sex) married couple.”

Chicago attorney Roger McCaffrey-Boss, who advises gay couples on tax and financial matters, agreed. He said gay and lesbian couples are more significantly affected by taxable events that, in most relationships, happen just a few times.

“If ‘John’ owns a house and wants to add his partner’s name to the title, the government is going to look at that as a gift,” McCaffrey said. “The same goes if he wants to add his name to a bank account.”

Indeed, the largest cost for gay and lesbian couples might just be finding the time needed to explore their best tax options.

Couples wherein one partner is helping raise the other’s children are especially at a disadvantage. Someone cannot qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, based on their raising a non-biological, non-adopted child. Similarly, they cannot increase their standard deduction if they are filing as a head of household on that basis.

Even in situations where both partners can technically claim the children, there will have to be negotiation. “Some couples ask, ‘who will take the kids? I’ll take them this year, you can take them the next year,’” McCaffrey said.

Couples in states that have or recognize gay marriages, civil unions or domestic partnerships unfortunately have additional paperwork to grapple with. They can file a joint return for their state, but they’ll also have to prepare an ersatz joint federal return that calculates their income and deductions filing as a couple.  In the end, though, they still have to file two single-payer returns for the feds.

McCaffrey said it was absolutely necessary for both partners in a relationship to communicate about sharing their assets and consider the long-term implications.

“The biggest mistake I see is couples who have a ‘yours vs. mine’ mentality,” he said. “Partner A makes more money, so he has everything in his name. Partner B quits his job and stays home. They break up and Partner B has nothing.”

“You have to speak up, negotiate and say ‘I’m entitled,’” he added.

Openly gay commissioner Kevin Beckner proposed a motion calling for a study into the feasibility of the benefits. Beckner, who was elected in November, said he proposed the idea now because the county is in the process of taking bids for employee health insurance. That process happens only once every four years.

Beckner is the first openly gay politician to win office in the conservative county;  during the campaign pledged he would not use the office to advocate for LGBT issues.

When he proposed the benefits plan, some in his district accused him of breaking that pledge.

In 2005, Hillsborough County made national headlines when commissioners passed an ordinance barring the county government from any acknowledgment of Gay Pride, and a second ordinance making it virtually impossible to repeal the first one.

While LGBT pride observances were not banned in the county, the ordinances blocked the government from any involvement, support or promotion.

Beckner’s benefits proposal would have covered same-sex couples and unmarried opposite-sex couples. It was defeated on a 5-2 vote.

Before the vote, Beckner told commissioners that he hoped acceptance of the plan would show that the county had become more inclusive.

“By making this small policy change”, he said, “we will send a message to the world that we are evolving into a more inclusive community,” he said.

But Commissioner Jim Norman accused Beckner of trying to blur the distinction between marriage and gay unions.

“I believe that family benefits should be between a husband and wife,” Norman said. “You draw the line somewhere and that’s where I draw the line.”

One commissioner said the proposal would be economically crippling.

“We’re simply not in a financial position to increase benefits at this time,” said Commissioner Ken Hagan.

The measure, proposed by Mayor Buddy Dyer, was unanimously accepted by city council Monday.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Dyer.

The move makes Orlando the first local government in Central Florida to provide the benefits, although about two dozen other cities in the state already provide similar benefits.

To join the plan, gay and lesbian employees will have to sign an affidavit swearing they are in a long-term, committed relationship.

Lesbian city commissioner Patty Sheehan said the change will not affect a large number of employees, but is still meaningful and to those workers’ families who will benefit.

“It’s a matter of life and death to them,” Sheehan said.

The change will cost the city an estimated $37,000; its health insurance costs are currently $33million.

It will not apply to unmarried heterosexual employees. Dyer said that opposite-sex couples have the legal option to marry, unlike gays.

A group fighting for an amendment to the state constitution accused the mayor of trying to influence the vote.

“It sounds like it is very strategically timed to interject himself into this amendment,” John Stemberger of Florida4Marriage said.

In March of last year, the Supreme Court of Canada tossed out a federal law that denied benefits to same-sex spouses whose partners contributed to CPP.

But the high court limited collection time for retroactive payments and that deadline expires Sept. 30.

A claimants’ estimated benefits could amount to about $500 a month and partners of eligible applicants must have died after April 17, 1985 and before Jan. 1, 1998.

Egale Canada, a national organization seeking justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gendered people, says anyone who fails to apply by the deadline will no longer be able to collect the full amount of back payments.

The group says the money can be claimed by filling out an application and submitting it to Service Canada at www.servicecanada.gc.ca.

Jeanne Kornowicz and Joy Higgins were married in Ontario in 2006.

Kornowicz, a school psychologist for the Cheektowaga Central School district, applied to the school board to provide health coverage for her spouse Higgins, after a Rochester court ruled in a similar case that New York State must recognize valid out-of-state marriages of lesbian and gay couples. The state’s highest court upheld the ruling.

The school district approved, but its insurer, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Western New York, denied the coverage.

The couple was represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union. In its court filing, the NYCLU noted both the Rochester ruling and a directive issued last month by Gov. David Paterson instructing state agencies – including those governing insurance and health care – to immediately change policies and regulations to recognize gay marriages performed in areas where they are legal.

The NYCLU also said that unlike Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Western New York, many other New York insurers, including other insurers carrying the Blue Cross & Blue Shield name, have been recognizing same-sex couples’ valid out-of-state marriages for years.

The NYCLU said that the insurer has agreed to follow the Rochester ruling.

Kornowicz and Higgins have had a committed relationship since 1998. Higgins gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Elizabeth Higgins, in July 2007, and Kornowicz’s second-parent adoption of Elizabeth was made final in January of this year.

Neither the Rochester ruling nor Paterson’s directive allowed for same-sex couples to marry in New York. Both were limited to marriages performed only in California, Massachusetts and in countries such as Canada, which have legalized gay marriage.

In 2006, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ruled that same-sex couples do not have an automatic constitutional right to marry in the state. It said that the issue, however, could be taken up by the legislature.

Last year the Democratically-controlled New York State Assembly passed same-sex marriage legislation, but the GOP-controlled Senate has refused to take up the bill.