Justice Minister Polls Parties on Civil Union Options
While far from a one-stroke solution to the Gordian problem of tying the knot, Minister of Justice Kristen Michal has sent the four major parties a letter outlining specific options how to regulate the issue of partnership and marriage.
Michal, who represents the Reform Party, stressed he does not want the issue to be dominated by a polemic over gay marriage, in a country with a large number of different unmarried couples. Michal argued that Estonia's unmarried opposite-sex couples have the biggest economic stake in the issue.
Michal said the parties will have until October to digest the summertime reading, and respond.
The four options in the August 2 letter cover the entire range.
The first option is to leave everything the way it is, and not to allow partnerships to be registered (or same-sex couples to marry). This was the option backed by Reform's coalition partner, IRL, back when it was in opposition, but Michal wrote that the option would fail to address problems related to property relations and right of inheritance.
Option two is a set of template agreements partners could use to regulate property rights, financial support obligations and right of inheritance.
The third choice is to leave the existing legal situation unchanged, but to scrap individual provisions that currently put unmarried partners in an unequal situation. A separate type of contract, a partnership agreement, would also become available - either for opposite-sex partners, same-sex couples or else independent of gender.
The fourth proposal is to allow same-sex partners to marry. This would not require a separate law, wrote Michal, only amendments to the Family Act and changes to several other laws. But matters related to adoption would still have to be decided.
Michal would not predict how individual parties would choose, but speculated that he feels consensus can be reached on one of the two middle options. He said he thought that there would not be political support for same-sex marriage.
Kristopher Rikken