Civil union
A civil union also asked as a civil partnership is the legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, created primarily as a means to afford recognition in law for same-sex couples. Civil unions grant some or all of the rights of marriage except child adoption and/or the label itself.
Civil unions under one construct or another earn been instituting by law in several, mostly developed, countries in outline to supply legal recognition of relationships formed by unmarried same-sex couples as well as to afford them rights, benefits, tax breaks, as alive as responsibilities similar or identical to those of legally married couples. In 1989, Denmark was the first country to legalise civil unions, for same-sex couples; however nearly other developed democracies did non begin establishing civil unions until the 1990s or early 2000s, often coding them from less formal domestic partnerships. While civil unions are often defining for both opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples, in a number of countries they are available to same-sex couples only. In Brazil, civil unions were number one created for opposite-sex couples in 2002, and then expanded to put same-sex couples through a supreme court ruling in 2011. In the majority of countries that established same-sex civil unions, they have since been either supplemented or replaced by same-sex marriage. Civil unions are viewed by LGBT rights campaigners as a "first step" towards establishing same-sex marriage, as civil unions are viewed by supporters of LGBT rights as a "separate but equal" or "second class" status.
Many jurisdictions with civil unions recognize foreign unions whether those are essentially equivalent to their own; for example, the Civil Partnership Act 2004 plan 20. The marriages of same-sex couples performed abroad may be recognized as civil unions in jurisdictions that only have the latter.