To wonder why there isn’t public outrage about this?

[Blusterylimp]

If a couple isn’t married but own their property between them, the surviving one will need to pay inheritance tax on their partners half of the house (and other assets) if they die.
Effectively they will lose their home to pay the IHT unless they also have huge savings.
How can that be allowed in this day and age when so many couples cohabit without getting married?

Them's the breaks then unfortunately 🤷‍♀️

Yes that's right. You both own 100% but for IHT reasons it's treated as 50/50.

You will still pay 100% tax, its just postponed. The survivor just pays the whole bill on 2nd death (and can use the unused NRB of the first to die).

It's really, really not 🙄

Then get a civil partnership - no religion. No ideology. Just changing the legal status of a cohabiting partnership for, say, tax purposes!

Marriage...if you want to own a house and/or have children together it is by far the most sensible decision to take. Too many women find themselves caught out legally because 'marriage doesn't matter'. It really does.

Marriage confers a legal status that doesn't exist for cohabiting couples. People are free not to marry but if they want the legal rights that marriage provides then they need to marry. There is a logic behind it. You could be "cohabiting" with someone one week, then another the next and another the third. So they could say ok if you've cohabited for X time then you get the rights. But how is the time you started and ended cohabitation provable? Marriage has a clear start date and, if you divorce, end date. People want to believe in "common law marriage" but it doesn't exist. People get told on here all the time that cohabitation doesn't bring legal rights and they argue back, ignore etc. it's crazy how little people understand about this very simple concept.

I'm not sure this is correct. If it's Joint Tenants, then the other half should just transfer without tax or any other costs.
Tenants In Common - yes I can see that being taxed.

@Meadowfinch shows exactly why the law doesn't extend the various rights attached to marriage to cohabiting couples. They specifically do not WANT those rights. They choose not to marry knowing what entitlement to property marriage brings. If the law extended those rights to cohabiting couples, @Meadowfinch would have to stop cohabiting with their partner and live in separate houses. Then some people would say the law is splitting up families.

Because it brings such important property rights that there would be huge scope for coercion, forgery, abuse etc. that's not difficult to work out surely?! Marriage and civil partnership don't require any party and the "ceremony" can be very short, very cheap and very private. But it is necessary if you want the legal benefits of marriage.

Make up your mind OP. Do you want rights to property or not?

Don't financially commit if you won't get married

@Blusterylimp what if you separate then die, are you happy for him to get the property then? If you're not happy about that then what if he says "we hadn't separated"? Your family or whoever say "yes you had". How would that be proved or disproved?

Here's the simple explanation, which isn't too hard to work out. It is because if you could avoid paying inheritance tax on what is likely to be your highest value asset by owning it jointly with someone with whom you have no legal status then people would be entering into arrangements designed to do exactly that. So the only way to avoid the inheritance tax is to put yourself in a much more comprehensive legal relationship with the person you co own the property with, namely marriage or civil partnership.

@Blusterylimp "Because people aren’t actually listening to what I am saying and don’t have the intellect to see other points of view?"

Is it not a bit rich to call out the intellect of people that knew the law that you acknowledge you didn't know?! A very quick google when you bought the house, or paying attention to the many many screeds of writing or hours of tv and radio on marriage v cohabitation would have corrected your ignorance.

You own a house as joint tenants together (you believe)
You're not married and don't want the ceremony/ party (agreed with another poster on this point)
Would like to inherit the house tax free
Don't want access to each other savings in event of a divorce, but would share I'm eventually of death.

I think the answer to this is appointments with a solicitor for you both to set up pre- nuptial agreements ( I believe these are still valid in the UK providing you have both taken separate legal advice and the agreements are fairly equal)
Followed by a civil partnership, which if you want, can look very much like a meeting in an office with a legal person, not a wedding.

As to why they can't do it- well, why would they? It will cost them money to set up, and lose them money in revenue, be harder to enforce (as you can own a house with anyone, should two business partners be exempt on a large property portfolio). And people could take advantage of the loophole. It's a losing situation for the government.

personally i'd rather save my 'outrage' for lots of other issues, rather than caring too much about the problems faced by people who despite owning extremely expensive houses, are resistant to paying tax, or signing up for one of the methods designed specifically to protect their life-partner from this kind of situation arising.

Another point that I don't think has been made yet is that with marriage and civil partnership the legal definition of the couple's commitment to each other is restricted to the declaration that the couple makes. The law isn't interested in how they arrange their household, simply that they have decided, before witnesses, to be treated as a legal unit.

If the rules were changed to extend the benefits of marriage and CP to cohabiting couples, the legislation would need to define the scope of who would be included. The consequence of that would be the state taking an interest in how couples live, asking potentially intrusive questions about time spent together, who sleeps in which bedroom etc. Otherwise how could the law distinguish between housemates and life partners?

OP, do you really want to extend the reach of the state into your private life to avoid entering even into a CP contract? We already know what that looks like, as it's how the benefits system works. That's an unpleasant but necessary reality, but it would be very bad for society to go down that route for issues for which perfectly adequate legal arrangements already exist.

Besides, from OP's posts I suspect her main beef is less about whether to enter into marriage/CP or not, she seems pretty clear that she doesn't want to do this. What she's actually unhappy with is the notion of inheritance tax. Which is a whole different question.

Yes my town is wealthy but those who live in the £600K houses around here are teachers and nurses, not wealthy people. The wealthy people live in houses over £1M.

It’s a whole different thread but the real outrage here is that the threshold for IHT on property is the same across the country despite property prices being in a different league in the London area. And London weighting / salaries down here do not adequately offset this difference. Those liable for hefty IHT in the London area would not only lose their house but have to move far away from family and friends up north to be able to buy again.

Then she should leave and not have been daft enough to have kids before marriage or civil partnership

You don’t need a party, just go off and do it. You don’t need to tell anybody.

Religion has absolutely bugger all to do with this.

In the UK, secular marriage has existed for nearly 200 years. Secular marriages far outnumber religious ones. And if all that weren't good enough, we also have in civil partnership an institution that's purely secular, CPs can't even be remotel religious. There are multiple options available that involve no religion at all.

It does depend on the sum involved. Inheritance tax is only paid over a certain amount.

My partner and I did a civil partnership for this very reason. (Inheritance tax) You do have to go and sign and they need to make it clear that it is solemn and legally binding but the event is really simple and plain. Our guy was respectful and pleasant so I think if you wanted to you could ask for/encourage either a slightly more or a slightly less ‘ceremonial’ style but we were OK with what was on offer. Worth considering.

Joint tenants/tenants in common makes no difference to IHT. It's not that easy to skive tax unfortunately! If you aren't married, the first to die has half the house in their IHT estate and a tax bill straight away (if there's over £325,000 in their estate).

If you are married, it passes tax free to a spouse on first death and then the survivor pays 100% of the tax (but can use any unused nil rate bands of the first to die).

How many times can your spouse die?