Friends with Benefits: Vermont's Relationship Classifications and the Common Benefit Clause

Vermonters share a variety of personal, emotional, and economic bonds. They forge these bonds by choice and by chance. Platonic friends live together for companionship; strangers live together for economic convenience. Onto this panoply of relationships the State of Vermont imposes three mutually exclusive classifications for legal recognition. Every relationship, no matter how diverse, is eligible for one set of benefits or none at all. This unequal distribution of benefits does not comport with the Vermont Supreme Court's interpretation of the common benefit clause of the Vermont Constitution. This paper argues that it is time for Vermont to recognize and support close personal relationships, whatever form they take.