Congratulations, Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan

Nice slogan, but it would be of fuck all use to a British citizen abroad whose partner fell ill or died and found their civil partnership wasn't recognised and didn't allow them to be treated in the same way as a spouse. There's also no reason to suppose it would do anything at all to alleviate the impact of patriarchy.

The idea is a terrible one. There is no getting round that.

I wasn't stopping at the UK border.

Women will never be protected by running towards the patriarchy.

While true, this does not address the point made. If you deny people in the UK domestic access to the contract that affords them best legal recognition of their partnerships abroad, that decision is sooner or later going to cause trouble for some of them. Whilst doing nothing whatsoever about all the women in the world who have virtually no rights at all. You do not have to like marriage as an institution or the history of it to understand what a stupid idea this would be.

Women's rights per se don't have a fuck ton of legal recognition in many places in the world and indeed marriage is a patriarchal institution.

Those people are being ridiculous then, given that UK CPs don't have any legal recognition in much of the world. That proposal would place UK residents in a position where they have no domestic access to the only legal contract that will afford state recognition of their partner relationships anywhere they travel. This protection would be limited to those who have the money and wherewithal to organise it internationally (and please nobody try and suggest that if you can manage a package holiday somewhere there'll be no barriers to you arranging a marriage contract abroad too).

It is a genuinely appalling idea, and not at all comparable to abolishing CP full stop. Which was at least practically doable, whatever one might feel about the fairness and desirability of it.

Now that gay marriage is legal, some people would have preferred that civil partnerships with their associated homophobic baggage were discontinued

Some might prefer that traditional marriage with its patriarchal baggage was discontinued rather than validated as the desirable norm.

Yes, there's not been much acknowledging of that on here over the past few days.

Absolutely decadeends, get sorted. That doesn't mean get married or have a CP necessarily, but at least a solicitor visit.

I agree avocado there is something about it that makes me uncomfortable.

People seem really genuinely pissed off that het people can do this now and I don't understand why. It seems totally innocuous and doesn't impact on them in any way.

Fraggling - civil partnerships were created out of a desire to avoid allowing same-sex couples to marry. They were a second-best option given to same-sex couples for prejudiced /discriminatory reasons.
Now that gay marriage is legal, some people would have preferred that civil partnerships with their associated homophobic baggage were discontinued.

Thanks Scrimshaw and BoxedWine for your replies. Have always wanted a ‘low key’ affair for legal purposes only but wonder if that’s selfish and that we would be depriving our pre-teen/teenage kids an excuse for a party! Need to sort something. We don’t have wills either just a mortgage and a huge amount of collective debt. Need to get this sorted.

My partner and I will be getting a civil partnership next Autumn thanks to Charles and Rebecca's efforts. I wish them all the best!

I would have chosen a CP if I wasn’t already married. We want the legal protections and had a small civil ceremony. Thank you Rebecca and Charles

But that's what I don't understand. Presumably you have to choose to have a CP to have all that legal recognition and protection? You still don't get that protection if you do neither.

Some relatives do no doubt get arsey and controlling about weddings, but why would they be any less disappointed if you just go and get a civil partnership, instead of a perfunctory registry office wedding?

We are planning to have a CP this year.
I signed the petition and am grateful that Rebecca and Charles worked so hard to campaign for this.

It’s really difficult to avoid the whole performance of a wedding, especially if you are “the bride”. And certain family members may never forgive you if you did it on a Wednesday morning with just a couple of friends for witnesses.

I do think it’s very much a feminist issue. I don’t dislike weddings but they are not for me, and no one should feel like they have to have one to have their relationship recognised legally and to protect themselves, their partner and their children.

I have read many a times on MN and been astounded that so many women don’t seem to understand the legal implications of marriage, co-habiting couples, religious vs civil ceremonies, that you could get married simply at the registrar office, and that ‘common law wife’ is not a legal thing. Many people still say it is ‘just a piece of paper’.

But it is basically ‘marriage’ at the legal core, whatever else you decide to do religious/ non religious, mr and Mrs, change of name, big wedding with meringue/ no meringue, all these layers you could pretty much add on as you want. The historical baggage , imho, is what you decide to make it and I do understand this from a feminist POV.

However, add to this ‘civil partnership’ , I see it as over complicating things and women will end up being disadvantaged, And some may well end up not having any legal protection at all which they otherwise would have.

The arguments about practical advantages and disadvantages of marriage v cohabiting pretty much all apply to CP in the same way, as far as I can see. I mean things like wills, inheritance tax, splitting assets at relationship end, challenging wills, intestacy rules etc.

The differences between marriage and CP are quite minor: different histories and problematic connotations, mother's name can go on CP certificate, adultery isn't a named reason for dissolution of CP like it is for divorce- you'd petition for unreasonable behaviour instead.

One thing that is worth mentioning is lack of international recognition of British CP. I'd suggest anyone having a CP and travelling checks whether a partner without a marriage contract will be treated in the same way as a spouse if something befalls one of you: medical arrangements, repatriation, that type of thing, and whether having a CP will mean you count as a spouse. The UK is pretty good about recognising non-spouses for practical stuff like that, not the case everywhere.

Thanks @boxedwine we do have wills and have documents stating we want to be each other's next if kin/want each other to be able to make medical decisions etc. Which I'm sure will be fine I just want everything to be watertight.

Both of our mother/father/siblings are dead or NC and we have no children. So we only really have extended family, friends and each other.

If you're in the UK, legal next of kin in the way you mean it isn't a thing here. There isn't an automatic right to make medical decisions, consulting relatives is part of a larger process. In respect of wills and assets, CPs will be treated the same as married couples. So the answer depends did the dead person have a will, if so who was the beneficiary, size of the estate, various factors. Do you and your boyfriend have joint assets, children? Ever seen a solicitor?

I don't know if this is the right place to ask but hopefully someone will know because I can't find the info anywhere else. If I and my boyfriend enter into a civil partnership, are we then each other's next of kin? So if he died (or I died, just reverse the questions) would everything he owns be legally mine, if he was on life-support would I be allowed to make the decisions needed to keep him alive or not, would I be able to make the decision to donate his organs or not and things like that?

I'll be honest, my response was a bit meh. I've understood the feminist objections to specifically religious marriage, and all the vows to obey, etc. but I didn't really get why a non religious wedding, which you can have nearly anywhere, say pretty much whatever the heck you like as a vow and enter into as long as you weren't married to anyone else or related to your partner was such an enormous no no.

The struggle for civil partnerships and equal marriage in the first place, for Lesbian and Gay couples, I totally understood. But I don't as yet understand why it's such a big thing for people who already had the option to formally commit and receive legal rights via that commitment.

HSAT, I think it is entirely right that there should be parity between the choices available to both homosexual and heterosexual couples, so I'm not angry or offended about this, which would be an odd response. I'm just a little bemused by it being a huge deal, though I accept it clearly is for some people.

But I'll be delighted when the law is changed to allow lesbian and gay people to marry in the national church and I know that's quite an opaque bit of reasoning for some people, so I'm happy to explore this further.

I don’t know if it is a good thing in practice really.

But what are the differences? Is it exactly the same but with a different name?

I'm planning on getting civil partnered this year! For me it's getting the benefits of marriage without the baggage of the institution which until relatively recently deemed me a man's property.

What’s the main differences with a civil partnership and marriage?