The Domestic Partnership Act is historically significant because the New Jersey Legislature recognized such relationships as beneficial to the state as a whole. The Legislative Findings and Declarations section of the Act states that domestic partnerships provide a private network of financial, emotional and physical support of the partners involved.

The Legislature found it important to provide domestic partners with the same protection that married citizens enjoy, such as: protection from employment, housing, and credit discrimination; the right for one partner to make medical or legal decisions for an incapacitated partner; and income or inheritance tax benefits.

The text of the act makes clear that the Legislature is committed to extending such rights to domestic partners which it finds “paramount in view of their essential relationship to any reasonable conception of basic human dignity and autonomy.”