Together, they have four children, including two teenage boys whom Mr. Vasquez lists as dependents in court papers.
Most experts say that comes down to whether your death would leave your dependents in a financial lurch.
He said he has only eight people in his office to manage security for 70,000 employees and their dependents in more than 150 duty stations overseas.
The government paid $70 billion to 7.5 million disabled workers, their spouses and dependents in the 2003 fiscal year, the report said.
The benefit is flat-rate with extra for dependents in Ireland and the United Kingdom (after the eight weeks paid by the employer).
There is no doubt that this pinched approach will put a significant number of workers and their dependents in a bind.
Companies are less likely to offer or pay for coverage of dependents in industries with low wages and high turnover, like restaurants.
Employees and their dependents in those states "have often seen only minor changes in their health benefits, resulting in little or no increase in their access to mental health services," the report said.
The five-part series, made by independent producer Love Productions, features the inhabitants of James Turner Street, which Channel 4 claims has one of the highest proportions of benefits dependents in Britain.
Mr. Leake is one of nearly 3,800 union coal miners and their dependents in West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana whose company-financed health insurance vanished with a swipe of Judge William S. Howard's pen last month.
General Motors has far different concerns, of course, than Wal-Mart, a retailer that covers more than one million employees and dependents in the United States but does not provide a retiree health benefit.
