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.

This is such a terrible idea. I'm shocked it's gotten this far tbh.

Marriage is right their, available to all, for a couple hundred quid. If you have assets or wealth enough to be concerned about splitting it when you break up, you can afford to get married.

The idea of a couple consciously choosing not to get married and then ending up sliding into a legal framework where you have responsibilities and rights to one another, and can't just have a clean split, is awful.

I have chosen to live with boyfriends in the past. I would have refused to cohabit if doing so meant the government would interfere and step in and get involved and make things complicated if we split. This is just making people's lives harder.

If you want the consequences of marriage, get married.

100 percent this.

I completely disagree with the proposals. People should be able to keep their assets separate by not marrying.

People are allowed to make terrible choices by making themselves vulnerable by being the low earner or non-earner and having kids and not marrying. Its not for the state to intervene to save people who have freely made terrible decisions in life.

People who make choices to keep their assets separate should be free to do and not be prevented from doing this to save people who could not be bothered to do a quick google search to find out what their legal status was as an unmarried couple.

Not marrying so that a cheaper, easier and mutually agreed break up can be agreed should be a choice anyone can make.

There is no way I would remarry again. I want to be able to easily leave a relationship at no cost to me or my kids' future inheritance.

It looks like another manifestation of the Politician's Syllogism from Yes, Minister.

1: We must do something.
2: This is something.
Conclusion: Therefore, we must do this.

This is ridiculous. The rest of the country is adversely affected because of a misogynistic religion?
If a muslim couples chose not to marry legally that is their business. They will be treated as unmarried couples same as everyone else.

Have a publicity campaign to warn muslim women, but don't change the law to affect everyone else to accommodate people choosing to put their faith in their religion rather than the law of the country they live in.

People are allowed to make bad decisions in their own life.

This! I think we should all respond to the consultation!

They've been highlighting this for at least two decades. I'm astonished anyone still believes in it. Google is a thing. Chat GPT is a thing. If people are too thick or lazy to bother finding out what their legal status is, that is on them. Its not for the rest of us to have to live alone or be forced into an obligation we have not consented to.

Literally! Surely anyone who might assume they have some sort of common law protection would Google it and easily see it's not true?

Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister would have gloriously have pointed out all the negatives and inconsistencies and correctly nothing would go forward. 😁

I was thinking about him funnily enough and his 4 words for successful policies. Cheap, popular and there's two others. Anybody know?

I think the negatives and unintended consequences would have been obvious to him.

It's a shame that a bunch of random women (and maybe a few men?) on the Internet have to be Sir Humphrey. 😁

Who is the oringator of this proposal?
It seems absolutely mad. I mean how many relationships would have never progressed past the moving in phase if this was in force?
Why is having a relationship and living with someone but not having all of your finance and assets tied up with them not an option??? some people want that.

I really think there are a lot of people on this thread who are hopelessly overestimating both men's and women's powers of reasoning.

Many, many studies of the social effects of this, that and the other policy have shown that rationality rarely comes into everyday reasoning. Whether it's about what to buy at the supermarket, or whether to move in with someone; even highly educated women (and men) make decisions with irrational parts of their brains.

Call it nanny state, call it patronising, but we have lots of laws about things that people should be able to decide for themselves or their children (gambling, drink driving, seat belts, psychoactive drugs, whether children need educating, whether parents get to decide if their child can get a tattoo/go into the army/vote).

Even on the "she'll have half my assets so I won't move in" side I doubt most men can think that rationally. Given many, many adults don't understand that the house always wins in gambling, or alternatively they do understand it but emotion wins over, they aren't going to be deciding based on "what is best for me and my assets" or "what is best for my children and their outcomes" but rather "what feels good". We see this all the time with women who stay with abusive partners "because he loves me" and the kids get either put into care if someone spots how bad it is, or silently living lives of misery.

So do you want the law to go in?
What about the ones consciously not marrying to keep finances separate, should they have no choice to keep finances separate if they choose to cohabit?

Who are you...David Lammy? Property ownership rights are the bedrock of western democracy. You mess with them at your peril.

You'd be surprised how rational people can be if something they've worked their asses off and suffered to acquire is at stake.

The examples you give don't involve any effort on the individual's part to achieve if that makes sense.

Even if you're right, so what?
The sensible should suffer for those that don't think clearly?
Is that what you're saying?
No offence against you personally but f* that line of thought.

Agreed. Also these days 'the bank of Mum and Dad' is involved much more than in the past, in property purchases of first time buyers. These adults will not want 'their family money' (often from their pension funds) going to a cohabitee after 3 years, if they split.

Personally I think three years is too short. Lots of women would also find themselves as the higher earner, doing everything in the house and for the kids - and then also having to pay their boyfriend if they split up.

I think it should only be automatic if you have lived together for 10 years or something.

Agreed.
It's amazing how rational people can be when it comes to money.
It is, after all, essential to survival.

How many women and men have cast aside the person they really love to marry somebody with money? Absolutely loads of people.
To say that people are incapable of controlling their emotions is nonsense.
Am I saying it is morally right to marry somebody for money? No! But it is a clear example of people controlling their emotions.

Just to refute the poster I replied to assertion that we all make dumb decisions cause we all turn into idiots when it comes to love.

Which, TO ME - and apologies if I'm wrong-reads like: 'well people are idiots so we've got to bring these cohabitation laws in.' Er, no!

It might not achieve the purported aim of this proposal, but the best way to retain rights etc. is to opt IN. If you don't bother, then things stay as they are and property/inheritances are protected.

It follows that a public information campaign would be needed to inform people of the merits and disadvantages of opting in.

If one party wants to opt in, and the other doesn't, back off immediately!

I am absolutely sure there are major flaws in my thoughts. Be good to hear them, because opting OUT appears to be very legalistic. Maybe it has to be.

Forgive my ignorance, I'm thinking out loud.

See that's it.
I think the idea wouldn't be so bad if there was a clear and easy (and free) route to opting out of getting financially entangled.
Instead it sounds like opting out nay be possible, but it'll probably be difficult and expensive.

And still none of it means that absent parents will actually pay what they should towards their children.

This seems topsy-turvy to me.

If we agree that many people are irrational head-in-the-sand uninformed uncomprehending fools for love (who can't even get their heads around the long-established and relatively simple-to-achieve protections of marriage or civil partnerships), it sounds even more crazy to deliberately engineer a situation where those very people will find themselves slip-sliding by default into massive legal and financial obligations without ever having explicitly consented to them!

But then if it's a case of opting in consciously how is this any different to the status quo where marriage or CP is this way of "opting in". The whole proposal seems to be based around the does that people don't need conciously do anything.

I agree. Another thing is that people with assets tend to be older people.
Less affected by hormones.
They've been around the block a bit.

I honestly I think when you get to a certain age you're far more pragmatic about relationships. We've not got it in us to be fools anymore.

I've learnt that being head over heels is a temporary emotion. I can't be the only one.
Financial security and survival becomes more important.

I'm not a man but a PP's suggestion that a man is going to be so blinded by love he's just going to risk half his house incorrect.

No man with assets who has had his fair share of relationships - some of which may have gone very wrong - is going to do this.

I would be in favour of that: people still think CPs are only if you are a same-sex couple, and that marriage has to be a big party. It's so rare to do a paper marriage i.e. down the registrar's office at lunchtime in your jeans, even though it's sensible. Women want a big proposal and an even bigger dress (or they don't want to be "part of an outdated institution" or "some man's property", and men think marriage will "tie them down" (which mainly seems to mean not having affairs/not going on stag nights, rather than actually being part of a family), and they don't think children do that because they think children are the woman's.

A colleague of DH's had changed her name by deed poll to be that of her partner/children which seemed so pointless, it didn't give her any additional rights or responsibilities, nor her partner, but she didn't want to get married. I think there are still a lot of people like that. CPs haven't caught on for whatever reason, but there needs to be something.

I really don't know why CPs haven't caught on, they could be with being better publicised maybe. I got a CP and it was perfect for some like me who wanted things sorted legally but isn't drawn to a traditional marriage at all, we specifically didn't want to do vows for example.

Legally there are no real differences though between CP and marriage. In some jurisdictions CP is not recognised.