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.

I know - that's why we chose it because legally it afforded us the same rights but we didn't have to do the same requirements such as saying vows as we would have to do for a marriage ceremony.

No there does not need to be 'something' at all.
There are already remedies available to cohabiting couples. Here's 3 I know of:

1 If a couple are cohabiting and one of them dies intestate, the surviving partner can apply for a share of their estate as a dependent.
(Indeed, the 'wifelets' of the Marquis of Bath tried this, they weren't successful!)

I cannot see why any judge in his/her right mind would deny the surviving partner a share if they have children together who are under 18.

2 If a cohabiting couple live together in a house but the house is owned by only one of them provided they can prove they've contributed financially they can make a claim.

3 a parent is already financially responsible for their children - regardless of whether he's married to the other parent. And rightly so.

So who does that leave? Childless couples whereby one of them doesn't pay significant money to the household.

Do you really think that somebody should be able to claim a penny in the event of a break up from the home owner in these circumstances?
If you do, I strongly disagree. And I'm going to say that I believe that the vast majority of people would too.

I also think that a judge can order that the main parent stay in the family home until the children are adults regardless of marital status. Though I could be wrong on this.

Pages and pages of women have overwhelmingly been against these proposals.
What's that tell you?
People who aren't married don't want to be legally tied to another adult!

I wouldn't say that I was right-wing but this cohabiting rights stuff gets on my nerves. Want rights, get married.

Correction to the above: It's Marquess not Marquis! Duh.
Apparently the outcome of the wifelet who has made a claim on his estate under the Dependency Act 1975 is undecided-or at least not that I can see.
Just goes to show though, even though he was married to someone else, she could make a claim.

No edits to the rest.

I think the length of time is completely irrelevant. Some people have practically paid off their mortgage before their partner has moved in. It’s outrageous to think anyone should be able to come along and take it.

How can we stop this? I feel very very strongly about this and I’m very angry that this could be forced on people. I’ve been looking at the Human Rights Act and I’m genuinely wondering if this new proposal could be in violation of them? Are there any lawyers in here that could advise? This will be political suicide for the government given the amount of opposition. Surely they won’t be foolish enough to think otherwise, but if it’s gone as far as a consultation does that mean they’ve already made their mind up? If you are against these proposals PLEASE fill in the consultation form.

There really are people out there that think that having sex with somebody, not even raising children, not even contributing a penny should mean there's an automatic right after a set time, don't they.
I consider this attitude to be flipping 😜

And I've banged on about multiple times here- because it's worth repeating-avenues already exist that any reasonable person would be thinking were just - such as a bereaved mother of small children claiming under the Dependency Act if her partner dies intestate- to right any wrongs.

It's a cocklodgers and gold diggers charter.
Live with them for a few years and just because you've shared a bed you automatically get cash and prizes.

It requires action, making a decision. Something similar happened with organ donations - very few 'yes' when a person was asked explicitly. Much more successful when you have to say 'no'.

women changed their last name for kids sake.

civil service overseas posts but also private sector. I know quite a few couples - they moved for her job for 2/3 years (Australia, USA, Singapore) (the other partner could not have a job there.

You dont think about bad scenarios. How many sing prenups?

some are desperate - tomato passata sperm as an example (i dont think they should reproduce if they fall for that scam)

'A solicitor who sacrificed possible partnership at a magic circle law firm to have children has been awarded an extra £400,000 in her divorce settlement with an equity partner at the same firm.
Making the unusual award for ‘relationship-generated disadvantage’, Mr Justice Moor could not be sure whether the Cambridge graduate would have become a partner at the firm, which she left after they married, but said she stood a very good chance.'

https://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/solicitor-wife-compensated-on-divorce-for-career-loss

I wonder what do you mean by 'standing on your own feet' when you cant just go back and make up for lost time.

Sure, she could work minimum wage job.

Civil partnerships haven't caught on because the percentage of couples who choose to stay unmarried because of marriage's patriarchal connotations is minuscule. Nearly half of British children are now born outside of marriage, yet children are still almost always given their father's surname if their parents are together - clearly, unmarried parents really don't object to patriarchy at all. "We're not getting married because it's patriarchal" is almost always a cover story. In truth, the man usually doesn't want to marry the woman.

There really are people out there that think that having sex with somebody, not even raising children, not even contributing a penny should mean there's an automatic right after a set time, don't they.

Indeed. And I cannot believe there are really people out there who can't fathom the extreme danger in making it clear that ensuring you provably have sex with somebody will gain you financial advantages.

There are cases where it should earn you a long prison sentence; but instead, if engineered carefully enough, it could earn you half a house and hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Loads of things are more 'successful' when you force people to have to say no to them. There are countless subscription services that actively plan a huge chunk of their entire business model around people who don't realise that they're paying for it, don't get around to cancelling or otherwise find it extremely difficult to do so.

It's financially advantageous, but certainly not an ethical stance. Nobody should be forced to potentially give away their rights without it being a conscious, opt-in decision on their part - I'm amazed at anybody who thinks that they should.

My point was simply that, if people choose to get married, it's within the financial power of the vast majority of people. Lots of people mistakenly believe that getting married must cost them tens of thousands of pounds, which is absolutely not the truth in any way.

If people choose not to get married, that's great too: none of us are born married and we remain that way until we die, unless we actively choose to marry. It's a very simple, basic human rights matter.

I imagine that these people are married, though.
It just makes life simpler if nothing else.

There are plenty of bad scenarios that can happen in life; but none of them are made better by bringing in effective forced marriage.

How would it actually help the women whose bad scenarios involve them getting romantically involved with an apparently charming, loving man, who then turns out to be controlling and abusive - if that same abusive man knows that the clock is ticking for him to cash in from her big-time, just as long as he bides his time and plays it carefully?

The benefits system treats people 'as married' when it comes to certain benefits, now I must stress that this is not an attack on benefits claimants but given the fact they're claiming they may not have the finances to fight any 'as married' decision.

But what if the government try this 'as married' stuff on people who have a good income and assets?

Perhaps they have the means to fight it legally. I hope so.

The government choosing to treat people as married for benefits doesn't bother me in the same way though, because they're making that decision based on the fact it is the public money they are protecting, it makes no sense to pay out more benefits to a couple unmarried than a couple who is married, but they shouldn't be enforcing that theory on personal private assets

Absolutely this. Given that it's men who mostly benefit when they don't bother to get married before having children, that pretty much disproves the idea that marriage is unfeminist. Quite the reverse. If it benefits women, it's feminist.

Of the several unmarried cohabiting parents I know, all the children have the father's name; the woman does most of the housework; the woman does more of the childcare; the man earns more. They're living the textbook patriarchal dream, with the bonus that the man could easily leave at any time, leaving the family broke.

Benefits is the government's money (yes, of course it originally comes from taxpayers), so they have every right to refuse to give their money to people whom they deem not to need it - whether because they have a partner or parents who can provide for them, or indeed any other source of supporting themselves, including savings.

This mad proposal would see the government giving other people's money to those who may (or may not) need it. I don't understand the people who try to equate these two extremely different scenarios.

ETA - sorry, Cherriesandapples1 had already said pretty much the same thing.

No, parent's income is not taken into account if you live with them.
The only thing that might be affected is the housing element.

And if he ups and leaves without providing for the kids then it will likely be the government's money providing for them too, in the form of benefits... So it would be in the government's interest to make this type of relationship equivalent to marriage.

Having thought about this a bit more it will surely be very difficult to administer unless there are very strict criteria. It seems a very strange thing to try and do when we have perfectly good mechanisms for legally forming a partnership. It also struck me if there has been pressure from ethnic minorities to legitimise the Nikah given that at the moment it’s not recognised and people have to have a separate civil partnership ceremony.

I think departing fathers should absolutely be financially responsible for the children they leave behind.

But no, I don't see that women (separately from children) should be bailed out after they've made silly decisions. They're adults, they've made their cohabiting bed and should lie in it. It's the children who shouldn't suffer for their decisions