Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think that lots of women will now be able to get financial and legal security

145 replies

PerspicaciaTick · 01/12/2019 03:47

without having to get married.

From tomorrow you can give notice for your opposite sex civil partnership. You can actually form your partnership from January.

No need for a verbal contract or a ceremony (unless you want one). Just sign the bit of paper with your witnesses. No need to spend a fortune - you can do it all for less than £150 (or you can still go the whole hog if you want).

I think it will be really popular - or am I misreading the situation?

OP posts:
MsRomanoff · 07/12/2019 15:05

This won't make one bit of difference.

The women who give up work, have kids, live in their partners house without any protection, will still do it. The men will still not want to do this. The women still wont leave them or decide they dont want kids with them.

Too many women dont even realise they are not protected until its too late. Not going to help them either.

I do agree, married or not, I cant get my head round anyone giving up their financial independence. But that their decision to make.

dontalltalkatonce · 07/12/2019 15:14

The answer isnt new forms of marriage (CP) and especially isn't making defacto relationships legally binding. The answer is a long standing, widespread, well funded, public education programme - to properly inform all prospective SAHP (mostly women) of their respective legal rights (and otherwise) under different relationship arrangements - when he walks out and withholds money or changes the locks on what turns out not to be the family home, but his house, alone.

This. A person who doesn't want to go to Registry for marriage won't want to do this, either, 'just a piece of paper'.

Original poster
PerspicaciaTick · 07/12/2019 15:26

@Moonflower12- every registration district has to, by statute, offer basic statutory marriage or civil partnership ceremonies for £46. Add on the certificate (£11) and the cost of giving notice (£70) and you can get married or form a partnership for as little as £127 anywhere in England and Wales.

OP posts:
Valanice1989 · 07/12/2019 15:33

There don't seem to be any differences between marriage and civil partnership when it comes to assets and pensions.

But that's my whole point, OP - if someone refuses to get married because they don't want to share their assets, they'll be equally reluctant to get a civil partnership.

I think this thread proves the point that some same-sex couples have made about hetero CP being cultural appropriation (yes, it's an overused term, but it really does apply here!). There are already posts about how family members should be able to get CPs with each other, and platonic friends might be more willing to get CPs than get married because of the connotations. CP was brought in instead of same-sex marriage to send out the message that gay couples aren't real couples, and now straight people are twisting that to their own advantage.

JacobReesClunge · 07/12/2019 16:23

It's a much shorter history, rather than millennia of marriage and its associated issues. And possibly a necessary part of getting to equal marriage, because there were more people who were anti same sex marriage at the time, so the compromise of CP helped with the social transition.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that CP is a fully separate institution entirely without any of the baggage of marriage, which is not exactly universally agreed. The flipside to the millennia argument is that the problems with CP are much more recent. I do not like that eg women in this country lost a lot of property rights on marriage, but that stopped long before I was born. The othering homophobia of CP happened when I was an adult, and I'm not even that old. It feels more relevant to me than laws that haven't existed in my lifetime. And the necessary part of equal marriage is merely a guess, nobody knows whether it's true or not. Most other countries with equal marriage managed to get there without CP.

Essentially it's just picking which baggage bothers you less, but it behoves us not to minimise. Although the poster upthread did make a good point about how we don't entertain the thought of eg not engaging in higher education because in this country women were denied it for a long time due to sex and in some places still are. I'd hope women aren't deterred from making what would otherwise be the best choice for them because they don't like the connotations of marriage or CP, especially because cohabitation isn't exactly free of problems for us as a cohort either.

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 16:50

Rape within marriage in UK was only criminalised in 1990ish (can't be bothered to look it up).

Marriage equates to ownership in practice in plenty of places around the world.

Idea that it was a few years back so who cares is just telling women to shut up about things they care about.

As for appropriation, come on.

Intetesting thread all round.

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 16:51

Why did govt fight not to extend civil partnership to same sex couples.

That is telling.

JacobReesClunge · 07/12/2019 16:53

Idea that it was a few years back so who cares is just telling women to shut up about things they care about.

Has anyone said that?

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 17:04

You did, at least very very strongly implied it :

'The flipside to the millennia argument is that the problems with CP are much more recent. I do not like that eg women in this country lost a lot of property rights on marriage, but that stopped long before I was born.'

I looked it up, rape within marriage was made illegal in 1991. Is that' baggage' (such is based in ideas of man's rights over his wife ie ideas around ownership) recent enough for you? I'm going to guess not.

nether · 07/12/2019 17:09

"That’s so sad that that’s how you think women get “financial and legal” security from a man. It just doesn’t occur to you that many women get financial “and legal” from having a job and supporting their family"

Yes, that's an option. But if you want to chose to SAHP or work part time when the DC are small, having legal recognition can be important. And arguably even more so if one of the couple is more or less compelled to SAH if their DC has additional needs

Agree with posters who think that the number who want legal commitment but disagree with marriage will be small in number, as I suspect 'don't believe in marriage' is often a euphemism for 'don't want to marry you'

JacobReesClunge · 07/12/2019 17:22

No I really, really, really didn't. Nor will I be held responsible for what you have invented on reading my posts.

I was a child when rape within marriage was made illegal. By the time I learned what it was, it had passed. So it didn't have the same impact on me as being aware that, as a bisexual young woman, if I did have a serious relationship with another woman the law wasn't going to allow me the same rights as I could have if I had a serious relationship with another man. As it turned out I partnered with a man and never wanted to marry a woman so I'm nowhere near as affected as a lot of people were, but nonetheless that is how it seemed. It is something I directly lived.

Now I quite understand that eg for older women, the rape within marriage thing might feel more like CP did for me, which is why I have been very clear to say that it is for each woman to decide which set of baggage bothers her less. And because I'm not given to making things up when people write something I disagree with, I've even managed not to make foolish accusations towards the people who feel they can better make their peace with the homophobia and othering of CP than with the misogyny. You should try it.

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 17:30

Older women 😂😂😂

It was 1992 not 1892 Grin

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 17:32

You say it was all over with marriage issues years before you were born, referencing property rights.

I point out a man could legally rape his wife till 1991.

You say oh well I was only a child...

You may think your posts sound neutral but they aren't at all.

JacobReesClunge · 07/12/2019 17:32

Easier than engaging with the actual point, I suppose.

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 17:34

'Essentially it's just picking which baggage bothers you less, but it behoves us not to minimise.'.
You do seem to be minimising the issues that lots of women have with the institution of marriage, somewhat.

I'd say being legally allowed to sexually violate your wife was pretty bad, but what do I know.

BlaueLagune · 07/12/2019 17:35

Why did govt fight not to extend civil partnership to same sex couples

Because they took the same view that I took, that it's not needed because a registry office wedding is the same? I don't think there were any patriarchal hidden agendas.

In their shoes I would have done away with the CP altogether as gay marriage is now possible. But they haven't, and as I said in my first post, it's really none of my business if it makes people happier to have a CP.

However, I agree with the people who've said that a man who doesn't want commitment won't be taken in by the idea of a CP instead of marriage.

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 17:37

I get that you think that it was terrible same sex couples couldn't marry.

Your tone throughout has been that this is worse than marriage has been for women, historically, including recent history here, and still is around the world.

I hear your point.

Your posts do introduce a hierarchy of harm where you put women second.

That's my reading.

Women married in 1991 are really not that old. It's recent living memory.

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 17:38

'Why did govt fight not to extend civil partnership to same sex couples

Because they took the same view that I took, that it's not needed because a registry office wedding is the same?'

At the time they said they didn't want to undermine the 'institution of marriage'.

JacobReesClunge · 07/12/2019 17:38

Hmm, we seem to have cross posted.

Your attempts at analysis are very poor fraggling. Essentially you said something daft and now scrabble round to try and distract from it. How on earth would you get the idea that someone who is giving a first hand account of an experience rooted in generation and sexuality is attempting neutrality? It's literally the exact opposite. The clue should've been in the bits about how people with a different experience might feel it differently! Which is more than you've managed to do, I might add.

Teachermaths · 07/12/2019 17:41

Because they took the same view that I took, that it's not needed because a registry office wedding is the same?

Absolutely this ^

It's not like re branding marriage as CP is going to get commitmentphobes to suddenly rush out and get a CP.

There are so many examples of things that women can now do which they wouldn't have been allowed to do in the past. I don't boycott them all through some sense of feminism.

I say that as someone who is married, financially worse off if we split because of it and I haven't taken his name. So not exactly the great anti feminist you have me down as Fraggling!

JacobReesClunge · 07/12/2019 17:42

Your posts do introduce a hierarchy of harm where you put women second.

Your posts make it sound like you don't understand that some people in same sex relationships are women fraggling. Which is veering on homophobic erasure itself. Do you think none of the people who were denied marriage equality and fobbed off with separate but equal were women? I mean, 'I get that you think it was terrible that same sex couples couldn't marry'? That's like saying I'm sorry you feel that way.

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 17:43

So what you're saying is you do see some kind of hierarchy of harm where same sex couple not being allowed to marry, and then being afforded civil ceremonies rather than marriage, is a greater harm than marriage has been for women, because all that for women was yonks ago with property and stuff.

I hear you.

I disagree with you. There is no hierarchy, people can and should fight for what they need / want, and its a dick move to chastise women who are unconfortable with the institution of marriage to feel that way.

Your posts come across quite badly, very patronising. I don't know if you are doing that on purpose.

Not sure what I said that was 'daft' either.

Fraggling · 07/12/2019 17:45

Xposts

'Your posts make it sound like you don't understand that some people in same sex relationships are women fraggling'

Now you really are grasping, my friend.

Accusing me of homophobia and not having heard of lesbians is quite funny though.

Valanice1989 · 07/12/2019 18:07

I don't understand the idea that the historical connotations of marriage disappear if you change the name! It's the same contract - it just isn't recognised if you travel outside the UK, and adultery isn't recognised as grounds for dissolution. The poster who posted the Alan Partridge GIF nailed it.

Teachermaths · 07/12/2019 18:11

I don't understand the idea that the historical connotations of marriage disappear if you change the name!

Exactly!