To hate it when people say 'if you're not married you're legally single'

[DrunkOnCalpol]

Because it's not true, there is no law defining the marital status of unmarried people. If you're not married, legally you're just not married, but that description doesn't enable people to put unmarried couples down so effectively.
Some laws treat co habiting couples the same as married, some don't. Yes people should be informed of the legal differences, but there's no need for some people to essentially say serious unmarried relationships don't exist.

@Drunkon Calpol

Is it your partner who has told you that you're not single because you're maybe living together and maybe, as your name suggests, have a child together?

If so, he is spinning you a line. Without a certificate (marriage or civil) you are, I'm afraid, very much single in the eyes of the law.

Divorced and Widowed are legal terms applied post marriage-you will never be these either without that initial bit of paper.

Too many men-more I think than women- spin this crapulous old line to their partners. If you're happy being single, great but don't let ANYONE tell you that it's the same as being married.

Also I don’t believe I’ve ever seen on mumsnet anyone who actually believed in common law marriage. Yet there is many a thread with ranting about how so many women apparently think this. Were they not listening at school?

There are lots of threads where people espouse beliefs that they have more rights than they do as cohabitants. They don't necessarily use the term common law marriage. There are also threads where people who do understand that there's a difference between marriage and cohabitation make inaccurate claims about being able to obtain the same protection from alternative legal provisions. That might be one that's specific to the more middle class and educated demographic here. And most weeks there's someone posting who is unmarried and splitting up/contemplating it/being strung along with promises of a proposal, who's about to get a nasty shock about her position being less favourable than it would be if she were married.

Also I never learned this in school, and I'm at pretty peak age for partnering and babies. I hope they teach it now but they didn't in the fairly recent past.

At what point does a standard education cover the law on marriage?

Yabu. It's factually correct. The entire point of marriage is that it grants additional legal status to a relationship between a couple . There would be no point in having a legal definition of 'single' because as far as the law is concerned, either your relationship has legal status (marriage), or it doesn't (not married).

There aren't any laws (that I'm aware of - it has been 12 years since I studied family law though) where couples are granted the same legal status as marriage purely based on their cohabitation.

If you have children, there may be certain rights / responsibilities towards them regardless of whether or not you are married. WRT ownership of property etc, then you have to rely on contract law and trusts, rules which apply to anyone who cohabits, regardless of their romantic attachments to each other.

I'm not being smug or anything. I myself am in the super vulnerable position of being an unmarried, low earning, mother of two, cohabiting with a partner who owns the house we live in. slaps own wrist

brownmoose
Yes. There's another thread going at the moment where a woman has been stitched up by her husband and someone has mentioned how a man has concubines in English law.

zsazsajuju
I've seen quite a few posts. They're often mixed in with 'why people are wrong to point out that it's risky placing yourself in a financially precarious position without adequate legal protection'.
There's a lot of misinformation out there about the legal position of unmarried SAHP.
It's up there with 'in the event of a split then you can change the locks and stay resident in the house until children are 18 and your ex has to continue paying the mortgage'. It's not common but it's more common than it should be.

(1A)This subsection applies to a person if the deceased died on or after 1st January 1996 and, during the whole of the period of two years ending immediately before the date when the deceased died, the person was living—

I'm sure your quoting of this rule is 100% correct, but the rule itself makes no real sense to me.

If it means that, after 23 months with somebody, you're entitled to nothing, but after 24 months, you're treated as married, what's the point of marriage?

How can they arbitrarily set the post at two year's cohabiting? What if your name isn't on the mortgage/tenancy agreement, but you've spent every night there for 20 years; or if your name is on the mortgage/tenancy agreement, but you split acrimoniously 20 years ago and nobody changed it, through inertia or for tax purposes - or even abusively refused consent to do so?

This also rides roughshod over the people who, for whatever personal reasons, categorically decide that marriage is not for them and thus do not wish to be treated as married - and is effectively forcing people in that position to prematurely end an otherwise-happy relationship in order to retain their single rights.

Surely, a clearly-defined way is needed, by which people who wish to have their relationship legally recognised can do so; and which those who don't wish for this can freely decide not to. This is what we call marriage, no?

that description doesn't enable people to put unmarried couples down so effectively

It's not intended at all to be a way of 'putting unmarried couples down' - it's just a different status, in the same way that a woman expecting to be referred to as 'she' or a man wanting to be referred to as 'he' isn't in any way doing it as a means of putting down the other, to whom the description simply does not apply.

I was about to say yabu because legally you are single if not married. I'm single but have been with dp 8 years, doesn't really bother me what some company thinks my relationship status is.

But, then I thiufb about the comments on here about benefits. They are correct, legally you have to declare a co-habiting partner, so you're not single in the eyes of the law then, so there must be another definition.

But it's true though?

Living together is not married. Engaged is not married. Had a 'religious ceremony' is not married. Having children or pets is not married. There is a clear legal difference !

This isn't about rights, I agree that unmarried couples don't and shouldn't have the same rights.
But the general meaning of the word single is 'not in a relationship'. There is no seperate legal meaning because 'single' is not defined in law. Unmarried couples are just unmarried, there's no law saying their marital status is single.

Dartilla you stated ''OP, if you are not legally bound to anyone who is not a dependent then you are, indeed, single, from a legal viewpoint.' Others have said similar.

I ask again, under what law is this?

ShitMe - it's also a flawed approach to ask for people to provide you with the law saying someone is legally single. Rather, if there isn't a law saying a couple have the same rights as a married couple would in certain circumstances, then they don't. So eg the tax break for married couples doesn't mention the status of unmarried people in the legislation, it just specifies married.

This is all true but I'm not talking about rights, I'm talking about terminology, sorry if that wasn't clear. I am not single and since there is no law to say that unmarried couples are single, it's incorrect to say that I am 'legally single'. It is correct to say we are unmarried and don't have all the same rights as a married couple.

D1sc0Diver - true and I've not stated the opposite

Legally that is true though.

I'm not married but have been in a long term, cohabiting relationship with the father of my children for almost a decade.

However, because we're not married I take every financial decision, every decision about a new job, etc, as if I were single. Because I know if the shit hit the fan, that's the starting point that the law would look at it from.

Also I don’t believe I’ve ever seen on mumsnet anyone who actually believed in common law marriage. Yet there is many a thread with ranting about how so many women apparently think this. Were they not listening at school?

I have seen loads. Especially where women genuinely think common law exists or they just should be entitled to the same as if they were married.

I don't think they do listen because several have insisted they do have rights because their mate told them that they do.

So many women give up work, move onto a man's home, have kids all thinking they have it sorted. Then the rleationship fucks up, at which they start saying the kaw shojld be changed. Rather than efucatinf themseleves before they make a life cjanging decision. Marriage doesn't give complete protection, but it gives some. But lots don't believe it.

But how do you prove that you're a couple? Is it from your first date? First kiss? First DC together? (what if you don't want to have kids?) When you moved in with each other? (a lot of couples live separately or are in long distance relationships) Who gets to define the start of being an unmarried couple? And not everyone is going to agree on the specific moment that makes you a couple.

At least with marriage/civil partnership its a precise, witnessed event that is documented.

Single in vernacular, everyday use means not seeing anyone.

Single in terms of legal status means not married.

It’s true to say both that an unmarried person is viewed as single in law and that an unmarried person who is in a long term relationship is not single.

Marriage is ultimately a voluntary legal contract - if you don’t sign that contract you don’t have the legal status.

If you think cohabiting for a while is ultimately the same as being married then I’ve been married to an awful lot of people. Some of them gay men!

You cannot confer rights and responsibilities on people who don’t want them, which is why marriage is a contract you actively have to seek out. The law can’t decide what relationship is valid by some arbitrary measures of whether or not you live together / share bank accounts / have children. Otherwise lots of people would find themselves tied into a situation they don’t want! I know a few elderly couples where both partners have been widowed and who are now living together - they won’t marry as they want to keep their assets separate and have their children inherit automatically. It’s not for the law to declare them the same as being married and to make each other their next of kin just because they live together and share a current account. If they wanted that they could marry, but they choose not to.

If you want your relationship recognised in law you have to go down to the registry office to declare it and sign a bit of paper. And in return the law can’t sneak up on me and declare that I must give ny housemate half my assets when I move out because I’ve lived with them for X years and share utility bills.

You are single though, (legally!) if you are not married, divorced, or widowed.

I'm proud to be single. I am not with anybody though so there's no ongoing low level rejection going on consciously or subconsciously. I just feel happy about being single. Sad to read that women hate having to put single !! Own it.

Hate it as much as you want but it's true.

You’re overthinking it OP. I’m divorced but now prefer to tick the single box for legal status but no one would deny i’m in a happy long term relationship with a man I don’t live with

Re inheritance, there are three groups who can make a claim on your estate, they are your spouse, your children and anyone who has been financially dependent on you in the two years prior to your death.

Also ‘claim’ doesn’t mean all of your Estate or the same as if you were legally married, it means a provision, so not remotely recognised as though you were married. If you were married but died intestate you get the first £250k and half of the residuary estate. If you’re not married you also don’t have the same tax exemptions.

In NZ the law is about how long you’ve been together as a couple , sharing bills and finances etc. The status for cohabiting couples ( of over 2 years) on forms is ‘ De facto’ .
When I got my NZ residence visa through the partnership category I had to show evidence that our relationship was over 2 years.
A Christian colleague ,who hasn’t lived with his wife before marriage couldn’t get the visa until they had lived together for the required length of time. So having done a marriage ceremony is not seen as proof of an established relationship.
I think that seems to make more sense than the British system now.
It would be strange if we moved back to the UK and we were suddenly legally “ single “ after 17 years.