The Williams Institute

As a result of the passage of the Domestic Partnership Act of 2004, counties in New Jersey have the option of extending spousal pension benefits to domestic partners of county employees, just as the state does. One common question related to these benefits concerns their cost to the county, in this case to Ocean County. Based on the current structure of the pension plans that Ocean County employees belong to, and based on data from the State, I estimate that the cost to the county would be less than $70,000 per year. Below I outline the details of how I arrived at this calculation.