Is your travel insurance gay-friendly? Make it your policy to ask.

When planning your vacation, you probably think more about UV protection than about travel insurance protection. And you probably think even less, if at all, about whether your travel insurance policy offers equal protection to gay and straight travelers. It may seem a fine point, since lost baggage, flight cancellations, or other trip delays are the same for all travelers regardless of sexual orientation. However, there is one major and often overlooked difference: coverage for trip cancellation and emergency evacuation for gay and lesbian partners.

It's one thing if you and your partner are traveling together and both have travel insurance--you are treated like any other pair of covered travel companions. The difference arises when one of you is staying home, If someone is straight, married, and traveling alone, and his or her spouse gets seriously sick or hurt, the cost of canceling the trip--or making an emergency return home--will be covered by travel insurance. That won't automatically be the case for gay partners in identical circumstances.

Why? Spouse has a universal legal definition that does not yet exist for gay and lesbian relationships. Insurance companies, which use that definition, are attempting to move with the times by improvising new language that reflects gay couples' changing legal status--a big step for these conservative entities. How any company's improvisation works for you will depend on its definitions and your relationship's legal status. For example:

* Access America's coverage extends to "domestic partners--persons with whom the policyholder has lived continuously for 12 months prior to the effective date of coverage."

* CSA Travel Protection and HTH Worldwide cover domestic partners but require that you document the relationship with "evidence of financial interdependence ... of cohabitation for at least the previous six months and an affidavit of domestic partnership if recognized by the jurisdiction within which they reside."

* Travelex uses the term key person, which could refer to a child care provider; for example, as well as the person with whom you have lived for the past 12 months.

* Travel Guard takes another approach, says Dan McGinnity, vice president for communications. "We are not defining spouse as a married partner in a union between a man and a woman. We're defining it right now as a legal union that is recognized by the court or a common-law marriage recognized by the court, regardless of whether it is heterosexual or same-sex."

However, not all insurance companies have taken steps to extend coverage to gay and lesbian couples. Travel Insured International's policy language with regard to nontraveling life partners specifically limits coverage to "a legal spouse or a common-law spouse where legal," according to representative Suzette Agostinho.

What if one of you must be hospitalized while you're traveling together? Your access to one another will depend in part on the legal status of gay couples in the country you're visiting, but you can take steps to ensure that your insurance company will be your ally. Sam Halpern, executive vice president of Insuractive, a broker that works with numerous travel insurance companies, advises that your right to make decisions about one another's medical care will depend on whether you and your partner have health care proxy and power-of-attorney documentation.

"If you're traveling with a friend ... and one of you gets hit by a bus, the insurance companies are not necessarily going to share any aspects of that person's care with the travel companion," Halpern says. "They will try to contact the family, and they will deal with them. But if you have a power of attorney with you and you fax that to them, then they will share with you."

So the age-old moral is: Always look at the fine print of the policy before you buy.