To think that this is fair?

[squashedalmondcroissant]

I know that this has been done to death but I read another article today relating to 'common law spouse' stuff.

Essentially, this woman's long term partner died suddenly in his late 40's and she was upset that she's lost approximately £45,000 in bereavement benefits in the intervening years because they weren't married.

Obviously I have sympathy for her, it must be awful to lose your partner (which whom she had a young child) but she is starting a petition to say that the rules should be changed because she and her partner were 'living as husband and wife' and so she should therefore have the same rights/get the same benefits.

I disagree. The simple solution to these things is to get married! It can be cheaply and simply done if the legal and financial protection is what you want. If you don't get married then therefore you don't get the benefits. Otherwise, where do you draw the line? Do you qualify if you have been together over 5yrs but don't live together? What about if you've only been together 2yrs but have a child together? How do you determine who qualifies and who doesn't?!

It always used to be the case that for means-tested benefits (i.e. was income support) that co-habiting couples were treated as financial partners whether they liked it or not.
So is this a case of the state wanting its cake and eating it?

When my then partner’s student loan income was taken into account when I applied to sign on after college, we were treated as married and I got virtually nothing. If I wanted to sign on now (I dont) , I can’t because my current partner’s income is considered joint income and we are treated as married. If I apply for a student loan or child care payments from university now they treat us as married and I get ‘minimum/nothing . If I can’t pay my share of the rent, they won’t help me because they treat us as married and he’s expected to pay for me too.

Why is it the state can consider us as married when it suits them?

I think in cases where a financial and relationship connection can be proven (eg kids, mortgage, living together long term etc) then if they can treat us as married to deny us support then they should also treat us as married to offer it.

That said I’m in a far better financial position to him and it’s all a moot point.

You aren't being treated as married. You are treated as being a household with shared expenses which make your individual outgoings smaller than a single person household would have.

Civil partnership?

I thought I had quoted a post MN novice. Apologies

You’re missing the point (and the language used is something along the lines of living together as if married) If a household’s income is considered as a whole regardless of the hallowed contract when applying for benefits or other financial support while alive, then the same support should also be offered on the same basis when one of the householders in the ‘living together as if married’ relationship dies.

The problem with cohabiting is you're not proving that you are in a relationship. Friends cohabit. People in a houseshare cohabit. Students cohabit. Family members (brother and sister or whatever) cohabit. You need something that you can sign to declare that you're partners and we have already that. They simply chose not to declare to be partners and that has consequences.

Seriously, they need to show the consequences in every soap and scripted reality they can find. It's pretty dumb to not officially arrange your life and people are not listening until it's too late.

How are they treated as man and wife by the state/anything official? Wothout being married, they're not.

Marriage is a legal document which gives you XYZ. You can't just say "oh waah, can't I have Y anyway because I want it" without also having X and Z.

YANBU. People are entitled to live together and keep their finances separate, and I think this has to be the default position.

If you were married but not living in the same house, his income wouldn't be included. So you're not being "treated as married", you're being treated as part of the same household, which you are.

Absolutely people have that right. However with that right to have separate finances, you also lose the right to certain benefits - such as this one.

How do you propose that people identify to the state that they want to have separate finances, but that they want a certain person to get bereavement payments when they die? It can't be an automatic "they've lived together for X years" because many people live with someone who isn't their partner, or don't live with their partner.

@orwellwasright is almost correct about the amount, but only if he had died after 2017. If before she might have been entitled to Widows Parents Benefit (there are conditions) which is based on the spouses national insurance contributions and the max is over £126/week (and lasts as long as the child/children is in education (basically 18). But since 2017 the rules changed.
Now it's one lump sum (3500 if you have a child under 20) or £2500 and a monthly payment of either or £350 (with child) or £100.
So yes if they had been married, he had made national insurance contributions and he died before April 2017 she would have been entitled to WPB until she either reached pensionable age or stopped being entitled to Child Benefits (normally 18). It is taxable.
So if married but kids are older than 18 you are going to get £4300 over 18 months if your spouse died now (that is my interpretation of the benefit - I am not an accountant).
Even if she was successful, I doubt the government would retrospectively change it so she that got the full entitlement. She would have had a better chance (though slim, considering they stopped the long term benefits for those that were married not long after her partner died) if she had started all this at the time of his death.
My husband did die pre 2017, my youngest was four years old, my husband paid high national insurance contributions so I get the maximum amount and will do so until she leaves education at 18. It is taxed but it has certainly helped.

AhNowTed

They obviously used the law to suit them, and all the best to them; but mixed-sex pairs of people have been doing this for centuries for tax/financial or social reasons, when they were just friends, as a business arrangement or, ironically, when one or both of them were gay but they wanted to present as straight.
Marriage/CP is legally nominating another person as a life partner in the eyes of the law. Love and romance are usually assumed, but nobody from the government is going to go through your phones every month to check that you’ve been ‘doing marriage properly’.

If the benefit is linked to supporting the child, I think it unreasonable to expect the parents to be married in this day and age. If the benefit would exist without the child existing then yes, you can't expect to get it if you are not married.

The problem then is what you do with parents who are no longer (or never were) in a relationship together.

Also, crucially, the law surrounding marriage/CP is clear that you can only be in one legal partnership at a time, which is not the case with non-married relationships.

What if somebody who had children with two partners died – how would you split the payout between them? What if there were more partners; or people who claimed to be partners, whether there were children or not? What if one or both of the people in the LTR were married to another person/people and were either cheating and living a double life or had just never got divorced from a former spouse who was no longer part of their life. What would happen if a ‘polyamorous’ (or claimed to be) person died and then 10 people came forward, claiming/proving that they had been in a LTR with the deceased person – who may have had a child with every one of those ten people?

I do wonder if it’s unfair for the government to treat couples as though they were married or civil partners when it suits for benefit claims etc. but suddenly not when one of the couple dies.

It’s a very valid point, but I suppose the government would say that benefits are designed to help you live in the now, so to see if you’re eligible for assistance to help you live this month/year, they assess your personal and household circumstances this month/year.

This scenario is about somebody’s total worldly goods (whether savings/possessions or insurances/death allowances linked to their life) that they leave to other(s) one single time. Equally, if you had previously lived with a millionaire and lived the high life, but had since split up (assuming no significant assets remain in your name from the relationship), you wouldn’t be denied benefits because of what you’d enjoyed via your partner in the past.

The government doesn’t care if you were married and leave all assets/payouts to your spouse/CP – it’s just that, where the state/government has to become involved in deciding what should happen, legal facts and commitments are all they go on.

I’ve been a British citizen all my life and previously held a passport, but it expired 18 years ago, so I now can’t go abroad. If I did want to go abroad again, I could campaign and protest that I’m very clearly entitled to a UK passport and the government is being horrid in preventing me from going abroad – but their not-unreasonable response would obviously be “We’re NOT preventing you at all: it’s right here for you to have, just as soon as you choose to notify us by way of the officially-sanctioned form and payment of an application fee that most people could afford without having to save up for too long”.