To ask everyone with children but unmarried to read MN facts on home page

[Patchworkpatty]

Following best friends horrendous split last year with her 'dp' . Together 25 yrs, 5 dcs . She facilitated his very high flying career. She always wanted to marry but he 'couldn't see the point for a piece of paper' sahm for 21yrs. He left for 32 yr old he met whilst on business in Dubai. Married her within 3 months giving bf no time to grieve. She had no entitlement to anything beyond cm for 3 dcs at home. ( others at uni) now has to rent her family home from ex which swallows all cm. he has re written history and she is 'lazy' for not yet having a job that supports them all. ( now works 40 hr week at local supermarket) please read MN/slater and Gordon facts on marriage vs living together. It should be part of national curriculum .

I take it this only counts if your DP actually earns a salary worth losing?

We're skint now anyway. Meh.

Sproke

I second what Aye says "what?"

So... we had a traditional handfasting ceremony up a hill, in the woods, lots of dogs and horses etc but found out that unless we got a registrar to perform the ceremony rather than our celebrant it would not be recognised by UK law. Couldn't find a gaelic speaking registrar or autherised celebrant to do it so my other option was to get married in a jeans and tshirt type thing in a registry office beforehand and have the ceremony the way we wanted after. This seemed like a total anticlimax to us so we opted not to do the registry office bit and just not have it recognised by officials. We had a lawyer look over our financial intertwinings so to speak before our firstborn so we knew we were covered and of course the whole parental responsibility thing too because a father holds no right to his child until his name is on the birth cert unless parents are married prior to birth unless you have a court document saying so... which we got. English is what I would class as a second language for both of us as we grew up in homes both speaking gaelic predominantly and it was important to us and the older members of our families for the handfasting service to be conducted in our native. And before anyone asks yes we remained bound to each other till we went to bed.

I dunno what he did, he did something that means our estate is in order and I don't need to care about it. The only thing I would need to do is for next baby go back and do the parental responsibility thing.

There's a thread in divorce & separation that suggests this isn't true - your best friend would have had a claim against her ex under Schedule 1 of the Children Act, particularly with regard to the house.