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.

Totally agree.
And we're supposed to believe that the person who 'sacrificed' their career would have been so clever they'd be earning a high salary.
Yet this couple who are so high flying couldn't even organise a few hours down the register office to marry and just left it to the whims of the government.

There's a thing I'm concerned about, though, though- my dh's car is at the garage being fixed. I hope the colleague who's giving him a lift doesn't make a claim. He is after all facilitating my dh's career.

You are missing the fact that we don't all consider the standard of care provided to our children by a nursery to be on a par with a loving parent at home. But I don't want to derail the thread with that.
I was a SAHM and I had a cleaner (but only 3 hours a week).

It is logistically difficult for parents to share care 50 per cent in practice so we do what works best for our families at any particular time. Anyone doing this should ideally make sure they are on the deeds to the property and/or married though.

That's good that you (general you) are providing such good care for your children... that's got nothing to do with your husband's career.

It's such nonsense to imply that a man with a housewife at home does a better job at work than a single man, or a man with a wife who works, or indeed a woman of any marital status.

Men with housewives do not have careers that are enhanced. Gone are the days when you got ahead at work by getting your wife to host dinner parties - at least in all the circles I'm part of.

Edit to add - by housewives I mean either married or unmarried non-working female partner. I'm talking about the "facilitating his career" thing

I think this is why PP is saying you should be compensated for that then, with a salary. I've never understood if you would otherwise pay for nursery and only one parent is dropping work to provide this care why isn't their partner compensating them?

Although I'm not in favour of this change in the law for cohabiting couples
I believe there is data to show married men do tend to earn more than unmarried and the opposite is true for women
I imagine there's an element for higher earners being able to offload some of the domestic chores and childcare to the partner so they have more ability to commute long distances during the week without worrying how the kids are getting to school etc, the other partner potentially changing to part time work to allow the higher earner to be more flexible for work. if the job requires relocating, the partner having to leave their job to facilitate the move and job hunt at the other location possibly stunting job progression.
In most cases it will be the woman who ends up in the position where they take the hit with their career. But in these circumstances I would want the woman to be married to give herself the financial protection marriage gives
I wouldn't want the law to change for everyone who is happy cohabiting and being financially independent

Offloading child-related tasks to your wife/girlfriend won't make you better at your job. It might make your commute easier, or give you more leisure time, but it won't actually make you a better doctor/engineer/designer/nurse/train driver.

It just makes you a worse father.

I wouldn't say it necessarily makes then a worse father if it's a joint decision for him to take on more of the work burden. In the same way I wouldn't call a woman a worse mother for working full time and sending her child to nursery.
It might not make them better at their job but it gives them more opportunities that are likely to result in higher pay as a result.

This proposal is a cock-lodgers charter.
As a former victim of financial abuse, my blood runs ice-cold when I think about what my ex might have got out of me by the time I finally worked up the nerve to leave him: A HUGE chunk of my pension at the very least.
If people freely choose the rights and responsibilities of marriage they have the option of marriage and civil partnership - forcing those responsibilities onto people who need to be protected by keeping them OUT of a de-facto marriage is unbelievably cruel.

You're not comparing like with like, with your analogy there.
You're comparing a working mum with a non working mum.

I'm comparing a working father who is an equal parent, with a working father who offloads the bulk of parenting to his partner. Yep, that's a worse dad there.

If it works like it does in Ireland then she'd have to be financially dependent on him, and if the relationship was short she wouldn't be entitled to very much.

Or maybe rather than shotgun weddings, just quite small inexpensive ones, if that is what is most practical.

It's interesting, my daughter is getting married this weekend, which she wanted to do before she and her boyfriend moved in together. Her rationale is - they are going to be making financial decisions together, decisions about moving, housing, which could affect their whole lives, and while they aren't planning kids now things don't always go as planned - so is they aren't really strongly committed to the idea of building a future together, with all the economic and other ties that creates, they shouldn't be setting up a home together.

What's interesting to me is the response they've had - a lot of people seem shocked that they are not living together first, or that they would think that living together is serious.

Both scenarios I wouldn't say are making him a worse father, same if the sex roles were reversed as long as both partners are happy with the split. But where one partner is sacrificing the opportunity to progress their career to allow their other half to take the job the other end of the country or travel for work and they take on the extra childcare tasks, housework etc. the partner who becomes financially disadvantaged in the event of splitting up as they couldn't progress their career should get married beforehand to protect themselves
It doesn't make the one who is travelling for work and home less a worse parent as long as it's a joint decision. Yes if they were making their partner work the same amount and pick up all the domestic duties and not contributing at all when they're home, then they would be a worse parent. Or if they were buggering off to play golf every day they weren't working. But sometimes when people are working as a family unit it sometimes makes sense to split paid work and unpaid work differently.

Hmmm I think I disagree here. If you never have to take time off to deal with sick children, and you can always say yes to business travel and you never have to miss that 7pm meeting with the US then that can help you get ahead at work. If you aren't badly rested because there's someone at home with responsibility for the kids who does the night waking then certainly in my job that would make me better at it. Or if you don't have to keep on top of all the household admin and cleaning and washing and making sure that the kids stuff is under control, that might mean you can do a bit extra in the evening without being exhausted or it might mean you have a bit of spare brain space that your brain devotes to problem solving in the background. I know that when I have to deal with caring issues for my elderly relatives that definitely takes up brain space that could otherwise be directed towards work issues.

So having said I disagree with most of the proposals, I just don't think it's fair to say that having someone at home more and picking up the slack can't facilitate your career. It may well also make you a worse father but that's not really the question at hand.

I suspect that the arrangement is about income splitting advantages.

One hopes it's not that he considers her his employee. Most people don't really think much of men who think like that.

The reason that marriage has traditionally meant combined finances is because the two people no longer really operate as separate economic entities, rather, it's the family that forms the economic unit. It's quite difficult to avoid operating that way, especially if there are kids because all of the give and take required to manage family life, people will so often be filling in gaps, making compromises, and balancing needs and wants of all in the family.

Most people who hold down the fort at home to support a spouse's demanding career, be that the as a sailor, pilot, lawyer, roughneck, or whatever, don't see themselves as employees. They see themselves as partners.

You have a very limited idea of what a career looks like. Not everyone works 9 to 5 in an office.

My father worked on an oil tanker. He was away 9 months of the year when I was small, 6 months when I was older.

My husband for a number of years worked six months of each year on a remote island.

My stepfather was a GP, he was regularly on call and night and had to go out without warning.

My friend is a lawyer, she works 90 hours a week.

The family down the street from me has a dairy farm. They can never all go away, and the husband works, as far as I can tell, all the time - he was out haying last week at 1 am.

These kinds of careers all depend on the other spouse being very available, and limits the possibilities for their own careers.

What's the class, age, and social status of these 3.5 million unmarried cohabitees?

I think that the government need to explain this in detail.

Another thing, I'd imagine a lot of these cohabiting unions end up marrying, anyway.

I'm going to say here that if people are 'high flying' they will usually be married if living with the mother/ father of their children.

At the other end of the social scale, it doesn't really matter if a couple from the so-called underclass split up.
There's f* all in the way of assets to divide.

I say this not to judge or criticise but to be real.

As for a trailing spouse, if it involves international travel then surely its easier to be married (and not CP either as not recognised in some countries.)

In all your examples the father is all but absent for large periods of time - but that still doesn't require the mum not to work. Otherwise single mums would all be unemployed. So the sahm logically still hasn't "facilitated" his career by giving up her job. There might be other benefits to giving up her job, eg the argument that she provides better care than nursery, but no one's career depended on it.

And if it did, I don't think it's worth the downside having an absent parent anyway. There's always a choice. No one has to work 90h a week.

I think unmarried cohabiting transcends income and age brackets now. I know so many couples who are, all of the white collar med-high income category (say, 60k-100k income per person). It's not just the stereotypical picture you're painting.

Fundamentally, marriage has become uncool. And many women would rather be seen to be progressive than protect their own interests. And men are selfish of their assets, as well as having too much inertia to bother with an organised wedding.

Women have been faced with the raw end of this issue for years. Now that women are earning & refusing marriage noises are suddenly being made about it. Equality my arse. We've still an awful long way to go.

How will this proposal work with things like capital gains tax too? Like if both people in the couple each own a property with one rented out while they live together. Will they need to declare which is their main property like a married couple?

And what if someone didn't own a property but under this rule were suddenly entitled to a share of their partners property - if they split up does that person no longer count as a first time buyer/property owner?

Edit to add - I mean those unmarried couples I know, have children.

And in each case, the kids have the father's surname. So progressive! Marriage is uncool but patriarchy isn't

I'm also surprised at the strong negativity here.

If the proposals were changes so it only applies to cohabitating couples when a child is born, would that change anyone's opinion?

If the problem that needs fixing is that child maintenance is currently toothless, make it toothy.

I think it's justified to make an adult financially responsible for their child. But not to another adult (unless contractually agreed, as in marriage or employment).

Who gets to decide which of the two parents is more deserving of assets? It's not as simple as saying the lower earner...they could be unemployed out of laziness or incompetence. What about who does the most housework or "career facilitating"? How do we measure that?

Ownership of assets shouldn't pass hands on measures as woolly as these.

It's anecdotal but out of the 4 youngish (aged between 30-40) couples I know of off the top of my head who fall into the higher earning bracket, 3 are married.

I don't want to be too harsh but if people are presumably smart enough to be a highish earner then they really should be smart enough to get married.

It's not the government's fault they don't and it's not for everybody else who are happily cohabiting with no ties to be dragged into their lack of foresight.

Smart enough to earn a goodish income, sort it out yourselves. I have little sympathy for them if they whinge about not getting much in the event of a break up.
In fact, zero sympathy.

I have much more sympathy for poorer people who may not be so bright.
(I appreciate that income and intelligence are not always related, but if you're earning a good income then usually you can be presumed to be reasonably smart.)

I don't know if you didn't read my post or were responding to the wrong one but your response didn't seem to have anything to do with the points I raised

But in response to your post. Some people will refuse cohabitation for fear of losing their assets if this law comes into play and people are then less likely to get married and have children than before. I wouldn't want to cohabit with someone and risk my assets if they didn't have similar assets to lose. If people don't cohabit, they are then less likely to move to the next stages of a relationship

Older people who have their own children and meet later in life may want to protect their assets for their children's inheritance, they can do this currently just by not marrying their partner. This law would mean older people potentially having to live apart or risk their children's inheritance

The couples without 2 pennies to rub together will obviously be unaffected, so this isn't an issue for them either way

I have several times said, in the cases where one partner is giving up their career or going part time etc to support the partner with their career, then they should be getting married, this law shouldn't come in to the detriment of the ones who are happy to remain financially independent from one another