MovieChat Forums > I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007) Discussion > I don't understand why they had to get a...

I don't understand why they had to get a domestic partnership

posted 13 years ago by sexykitten0814
6 replies | jump to latest

I get the whole reason Larry wanted to get a fake domestic partnership with Chuck was to make sure his kids would be taken care of and would get his survivor benefits if anything happened to him. Apparently, the only person he entrusted that responsibility to was Chuck. But why couldn't Larry just make a will appointing Chuck as the kids' legal guardian and leave his survivor benefits to his children to be overseen by Chuck until the kids were legal? Was this really not possible under their state law? It's been awhile since I've seen this, so maybe I'm forgetting some part that explained it?

[–] rabbyt1 12 years ago

Eh, it's a movie... Obviously in real life eventually he would have been able to change the benefits during his open enrollment period or figured something out!

But if he'd done that there wouldn't have been a movie.

[–] paxtonaddleman 11 years ago

Also, anytime you name a beneficiary for anything, you also get to name secondary beneficiaries, in case the primary/ies died before you and you didn't get a chance to change the terms before your death.
So yeah, a bit of a stretch - they could have found a better motivation if they had tried a little harder.

[–] Frumious_Bandersnatch_46 11 years ago

Very near the beginning of the movie, after the guys are out of the hospital, some bureaucrat is explaining to Larry that those changes may only be made on certain occasions -- and Larry had failed to change his beneficiary within a year after his wife died.

Entering into a domestic partnership with Chuck was the only thing Larry could think of (within their stated rules) that would allow him to change his beneficiary. After the close call that put him in the hospital, he wanted to make sure that his children were provided for -- and as quickly as possible.

However, we must bear in mind that:
a) Larry basically had the I.Q. of dryer lint, and
b) If he had found another solution, we'd have been out one movie with about 3,012 f@g jokes.

[–] rabbyt1 11 years ago

That is true, but once a year there is "open enrollment" and he would have been able to change that information then.

[–] Frumious_Bandersnatch_46 11 years ago

The way I saw it was that, after the accident that landed both of them in the hospital, Larry was suddenly motivated to make sure his children were properly taken care of — and as quickly as possible. He wanted to fix that now, not wait until the next open enrollment.

That and it's a movie. In the real world, I greatly doubt that there would have been such a restriction on Larry changing his insurance beneficiary. Changing his plan, perhaps, but not changing his beneficiary. In which case, we'd have had just about enough story for one sitcom episode.

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[–] 11 years ago

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