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.

Yeah why not?
They'll say that there's no sexual/romantic relationship but there's no difference apart from that in terms of support.

Hmm seems to me that the government are saying that women are prostitutes here - in a very round about way of course.

Of course we already have a system whereby people can make a legal commitment without intrusive questions about their sex life.

What's it called again? Begins with an m...

Economic advantage legislation exists in Scotland, which offers protection to unmarried cohabiting couples. I was very glad of it when I split with my (unmarried) EX DP of 28 years, with whom I shared a child.

I don't think most Scottish residents know this.

I do wonder whether one consequence will be an increase in compromise settlements. Aren't these sorts of pragmatic go-away money orders already fairly common in short marriages?

I.e. even where the prospects of success are limited, the cost, uncertainty and sheer aggravation of litigation can make it economically rational for the wealthier party to pay a reasonable sum, secure a clean break and move on.

Late to the discussion, but I think this is really something that is a tricky issue. It should be simple, but it isn't.

In a perfect world, people who wanted the legal obligations of marriage would enter into that contract. And those that didn't wouldn't. People would look to protect their own interests and make decisions accordingly.

The difficulty is that the interests of the parties involved conflict, that is the point of creating the legal obligation. To protect the more vulnerable person, usually the woman who has had a child.

Unfortunately what happens is the person who is most vulnerable to exploitation may also not be in a position to set the terms of the relationship and insist on marriage. And that is more true, the more vulnerable she is.

It's especially so now that there is little or no social pressure for the couple to marry, the woman who would potentially be protected in these cases can be made to feel she is being pushy, and has no leg to stand on to insist on marriage as being important.

The other side of that, for me, is that the woman who does not want to marry in order to protect her assets is, in many cases, fairly well off, and actually in a much better position to negotiate, have a pre-nuptial agreement, or protect her assets in some other way. Including by not cohabiting, since she can likely afford to live alone.

So on the one hand my gut feeling is that people should be able to enter into the contractual arrangements they want. But realistically, people pair up and that is still often a mainly economic decision (as marriage always has been), and it's important to have social structures that protect the more vulnerable members of such a union from exploitation. And if it's socially and legally something they can opt out of, then it won't work.

Maybe the result would actually be people not living together without very careful forethought? Which might not be a bad thing in the end.

A pp above mentioned women "holding out for a fairytale wedding" which sounds flippant but it really is at the heart of a considerable problem.

Once a couple are living together with shared children, they're already "committed" and the romance is gone, where's the impetus to get married? Typically (not always but in the majority of cases) the man is the higher earner - what's in it for him, to get married? He'd be signing assets away for no reason.

We all know several couples like this. In none of these cases would the men admit, even to themselves probably, that they're resisting getting married through self-serving financial reasons. No, he's too busy, or doesn't "believe in it", or can't settle on a date/venue/ring, or he's saving his proposal for the right moment, blah blah.

Really, it's on women to protect themselves by not having kids until they're married. An alternative is not giving up one's career after having children, but often women plan not to, but then prefer to spend more time with their kids and fall into sahm-hood in an unplanned way.

We've got to get back to normalising shotgun weddings, to protect vulnerable mothers. I really feel this. And of those couples I know who are unmarried parents with unequal incomes, I judge the men for being selfish and I judge the women for being foolish.

I'm sceptical, given how many marriages, which are conscious and deliberate commitments (not to even mention often accompanied by enormous wedding ceremony expense) still end up dissolving in complete acrimony.

I think the law is about more than just protecting the vulnerable. Property rights are the bedrock of western democracy and I perceive this as an attack on them as well as undermining the institution of marriage/civil partnership.
A woman can use contraception to avoid pregnancy and therefore have a lever to encourage her partner to commit by marriage if he wants a child.
I shouldn't have to rethink all my legal/living arrangements just to head off these people who aren't acting in their own interests.

It seems there is already some provision in 1996 legislation to protect women in very long-standing cohabitation arrangements. It appears Scotland may have sth even dodgier.
The legal profession will be the biggest winners from all this.

We've got to get back to normalising shotgun weddings, to protect vulnerable mothers @Kingdomofsleep 😯😬
Maybe you're right?! Then again it seems to me that women are increasingly out earning men & seeing that when this happens in a relationship the man tends to double down on his efforts to control her and her money.
I suspect that women will increasingly see that it's not in their interests to share their lives with men at all.

women are increasingly out earning men

Are they?! I don't see that reflected in the gender pay gap stats at all. Especially not mothers of young children vs fathers.

Absolutely. This whole thing should be illegal in itself. It should not be allowed that you have this forced on you when you made decisions at the time based on the legislation at that time

I hope they read it too. Surely enforcing this when so many people are against it would be political suicide. This feels like a massive windfall for Keir’s mates in the law sector. They’ll be rubbing their hands together. I would fight this all the way.

I screenshot this yesterday (I was so upset at the thought of my family losing my home when I die!) and I'm sorry, but I can't remember where from. In the middle, it says if you have made a will then it will be honoured. I've cherry picked the bit that interests me for which I apologise.
Edited to say, where is the screenshot? Oh dear.

So anyone who wants children and not be a part time parent has to accept that there is no other alternative but to share all their assets! Nice!

It's really sad that this is true and that the partner who doesn't want to get married places the potential of a loss to them in a divorce above the risk to their partner and children if he died. The clue to women should be not to be with the men who aren't proactive about protecting them for that worse case scenario and certainly don't give up your financial independence when they're showing you they care more about their own financial independence.

The upshot is that people would either live apart until marriage. Or not cohabit at all if they've got any material wealth.

Also by the time people have money and assets they're usually well beyond the starry- eyed 'love is all' point. They're older and wiser. More pragmatic.

This is not just a 'poor woman' issue, either.
I don't know what decade Lammy's living in but women have assets too.

The result of these proposals will be further atomisation of society, more people living apart, greater costs to the taxpayer as regards benefits not less.

Does anybody seriously think a man who is commitment phobic is going to even cohabit now? Like hell he will.

If a person's property can just be taken off them just because they've had sex with somebody for a few years, we might as well go fully communist.

So if this gets through and I die leaving my share of house to DH to then pass onto kids, if he shacks up with someone else for 3 years they can have claim on the kids inheritance?

Sounds like it.

Yes most likely but he could change his will after you have died anyway in favour of a Russian mail order bride...if he wanted to.
At best he would have to enter into the opt out agreement with his new cohabitee in order to respect your wishes.

At least by rewriting his will he is opting into disinheriting the children though rather than allowing it to happen by default ( which is much more likely).

Make sure you share your views

https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/a-fairer-end-to-relationships-consultation/consultation/

Agree. I mean, the only men I would ever live with again are the two I have given birth to ( and that's only to a point) but no way in hell would I risk someone walking away with money that should be theirs. Or even mine, after 3 bloody years! Grown adults should be able to make grown adults decisions and live with the consequences.

Judging by the current proposals, it would look like it. This could actually affect me in more than one way, as both someone with assets to protect and as someone who may be disinherited. My mum died in her 40s and most of the house had been paid off by then. My dad met someone after and they moved in about 10 years later. They’ve now been living together for many years but have never married. I’m not sure my dad would have moved her in had this been in place then. She had no house of her own. He currently has a will stating she can live into the house until she dies, but after that it goes to me. Under these proposals, she could get everything and pass it to her own kids who have never even lived in the property. It was my childhood home. My mum would turn in her grave. This is not what she would have wanted, and my dad shouldn’t be ‘married off’ by the state. This is not what he signed up for.

If this goes through I will be advising both my son and my daughter not to live with a partner until engaged and on the understanding they marry within the year or move out.