Domestic partnerships are better in many cases in that they are easier to end. There are also the mentioned Social Security concerns, but the main way they are better is to end a domestic partnership, you sign a piece of paper and go your separate ways. Marriage takes a minimum of 6 months to dissolve and will almost certainly require paying a lot of money to lawyers.Crissa wrote: And in nearly no cases is domestic partnership 'better'. Only in cases where marriage would annul a prior benefit - usually for a widow or survivor of a marriage - and that's just kinda cheating. Should just change the prior benefit instead.
With regards to Sphere's question: The USC (United States Code, which is most of federal law) is 42 volumes long, and each volume is roughly the size of a very large dictionary. Doing a simple find replace isn't going to cut it. Then there is all the case laws and whatnot. Marriage isn't just a simple thing you can x out and replace without serious consideration and a lot of work.