Consultation on unmarried couples sharing assets when they break up

[CruCru]

There’s a thing in the Times today which says that there is a consultation on unmarried couples sharing assets after a break up. Pretty much, if they separate they could be entitled to a share of a house sale and maintenance. They could also be given automatic inheritance rights if their partner dies without leaving a Will.

The proposal is that people who live together for three years or who have a child together would have these rights.

AIBU to be a bit conflicted on this? On the one hand, I really wish schools covered marriage and the rights and responsibilities it gives you. I’ve talked to women (who live with their partners) who were really taken aback to find out that they didn’t automatically get the same rights as married couples. On the other hand, when I was young (late teens / early twenties), I lived with a boyfriend who was a bit of a sponger - I’d have been really annoyed to find out that he was entitled to any of my money when we split up.

A civil ceremony doesn't involve the woman being given away, when DH and I married it was a simple declaration that we knew no just cause that we couldn't marry, and calling upon the people present to witness that we were married. A very simple, and cheap, ceremony. No religion, no fuss.

I agreed with your comment as there is no like button. I like it as it's new information.
OK if this is part of proposed VAWG legislation, then presumably it does not protect women from men who after their assets?

If so, that's blatant sex discrimination.

I must be missing something here.
Am I?

Not sure if it's been shared already but here is the consultation link
A fairer end to relationships consultation - Ministry of Justice - Citizen Space

Possibly because our current government is full of idealistic do-gooder s who have never heard of the expression the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

@QuintadosMalvados I don't think you have missed anything. It sounds like a newly minted muddle to keep people busy.
I seriously think there are more important subjects that the Government should focus on right now. VAWG is a separate topic and can be improved by attention to Courts and Policing.
Other priorities should be Defence; Cost of Living; Education; & Transport even.

I'm trying to reconcile the 'I would never marry, it's an old fashioned out of date patriarchal institution that oppresses women' with 'women who cohabit must have the same rights to the man's house and assets as married women'. Please make it make sense.

Exactly!

Thanks. Your post provided fresh information.
I think that most of us here - myself included-are just saying the same things in different ways.
(No offence meant to other posters. I'm repeating myself, too.)

Exactly. If marriage is so patriarchal and oppressive to women, why are women so vulnerable without it? The main reason for marriage, historically and today, is to protect mothers.

We used to "enforce" marriage through shaming... that became a stick to beat women, which isn't good. But for a long time it was a way to hold men to account. Men literally had legal penalties if they "jilted" women.

Logically there's no reconciling the two but people want the best of both worlds'. Just human nature.

you don't need to get married, you can enter a civil partnership

I think the issue is more that some men won't get married because they don't want the commitment. So the women should wake up and not have children with them - and if they do, the CSA should be given some teeth.

Men shouldn't be required to keep their ex-partners but they should be required to keep their kids (the same applies to women of course but that doesn't tend to be the issue).

There's only very minor differences between civil partnership and marriage.

(One being that adultery is no reason to end a civil partnership. But so what? No real practical use. Also civil partnerships may not be recognised in other countries outside of the UK)

They were introduced to give same sex couples marriage in all but name. That was the entire point of them!

They weren't called marriage to avoid upsetting religious sensibilities.

No man or woman who knows this is going to enter a civil partnership instead of marrying unless it's for personal feelings.

You'd be a fool to have a civil partnership thinking it's a mild form of marriage.
Same stuff applies.

You're still going to go through the same division of assets if the civil partnership breaks down.

This makes sense if you view their introduction as being marriage by another name.

Civil partnerships are not marriage lite at all and how people feel about patriarchy etc is not relevant.

Also civil partnerships were extended to opposite sex couples after same sex couples.

I'm not sure if civil partnerships require consummation, either, but in reality these are inconsequential differences.
If an opposite couple in a civil partnership have a child that is biologically their's than it's obviously been consummated.
Indeed the whole notion of consummation of marriage can be argued to be outdated in itself. Unless you're of a particular religious faith/s.

Seems recent history has been forgotten though as some perceive civil partnerships as some kind of marriage lite when it is not.

I simply don’t understand why more people don’t seem to know about civil partnerships. You get all the legal protections of marriage, but can do it cheaply and privately. It’s an option for all couples, heterosexual or same sex. We did it, after about 20 years of cohabitation. No fuss or bother, no ceremony. We just wanted to get our legal affairs in order. The biggest expense was having to do new wills afterwards. If more people did this, the new proposals would be redundant.

Civil partnership requires no ceremony or even vows and is a much simpler legal protection for the worries you have like assets etc without creating a new complicated system that would have all sorts of grey areas.

This is ridiculous - marriage is the financial contract that people decide to enter into (or not enter into). Some sort of contract imposed by default will be open to all sorts of abuse and fraud. And, what happens if people want to live together and not get financially entwined - will they have to contract out of this ridiculous idea/will they need to forego living together? Other countries manage this perfectly well by having civil marriage which is very much understood as a financial contract and then if you want to have an additional religious cermony/party knock yourself out.

And to add France has the great idea of PACS which means you can officially tie yourself to someone financially without marrying.

They don’t but neither do same sex marriages. No one has ever agreed on a definition of sex so it just doesn’t apply.

The adultery thing has been moot since we got no fault divorce in 2022

I think most people do know but so many want to make a big things of they don't believe in marriage or civil partnership, they can't afford it (what a joke), they don't want to be told what to do blah blah blah. They then expect the law to change so they can get all the benefits of marriage/civil partnership.

I always find it amusing that things which work perfectly well in other countries couldn't possibly work in the UK.

Living in your own home for 3 nights and staying at your "partners" home for 3 nights with a night alone gives you the best of both worlds.

To be fair, all the countries cited (NZ, Ireland, Australia, Canada) have passed some extremely stupid laws where negative and unforeseen consequences haven't been thought through.

But are de facto living arrangements one of them, which is more the point?