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 knew I would get asked! The historical idea of “ownership” by the man, giving the woman to her, change of name etc. That’s why I like the idea of partnership. Personal choice only of course, and all my friends are (I believe) happily married but it’s never been something I wanted.

I was just about to say this. Somehow people in other places seem to make it work.

I suppose an elderly person isn't going to be having a new baby with a carer or indeed anybody else... but like with so many laws, you don't have to just look at how it's introduced, but rather what it could become and how stringent restrictions could be relaxed or completely removed in time.

The same way visa applicants have to - joint bills, photos messages etc

The biggest winners would be lawyers.

I’d like to know more about what the Australian system actually is and how well it works. It’s just an assumption at the moment that it’s unproblematic. I guess some research is in my near future.

But I thought the whole point was that you didn’t have to prove the relationship? That it would be automatic on shared housing for 3 years? Or is that not correct?

So people who do not wish to legally be obligated to a partner are forced to?
Stuff that, what is then the point of marriage or civil partnership if you actually can't avoid it.
I firmly oppose this. (As a happily married woman 😊)

A cynic might see this as creating a new culture of entitlement.

"We've been together for three years, so now I'm entitled to a share of your house, your pension, your savings and potentially maintenance payments." Sounds reasonable to me 🙄

It would essentially be a "failed relationship tax".

Thanks for explaining.
For what it's worth I do see my marriage as a partnership and we are fully equal in it and I know a lot of people who have kept their name, although I chose to change mine. It is good we have the option of civil partnership now as well and like you said, personal choice. Which is the important thing.

Exactly. Especially people with second families, widowers etc who want to pass things to their own kids.
It seems absolutely ridiculous.

If you want the protection then get married? If you don’t then don’t!

🤣 sounds like a crazy scheme when you put it like that. Imagine the admin

Women still live in the fairly tale though.
And they all lived happily every after.

Till they didn't.

Women get real!

Put your financials into your own bank account.

The best thing my parents taught me and my sisters.

Fuck that. I'd have been made bankrupt twice over had that been in place when I realised I was being taken for a mug.

Yes, I was proposed to as soon as possible once the prospect of losing home, food, clothes and bills paid dawned on him. And yes, it didn't go down well and I was threatened with being 'taken for everything you own, I'm going to put you out on the street' afterwards.

This goes ahead and it becomes a Cocklodgers' Charter.

And what if you had a child but never lived together?

How on earth would it be proved that you’ve lived together as a couple

I imagine it would be as simple as did you have sex? And if the answer is yes you have.

No
Just no
If you want the rights and legal benefits etc of being married then get married.

It’s a bad idea. For those who don’t like the religious connotations of a marriage, there is now the civil partnership available to all unrelated couples.

That just sounds like the other side to the 'but if you're married to him, he couldn't possibly have raped you' coin. An extremely dangerous assumption to make.

All this just to get the message across to people who somehow don't realise that, if you haven't got married, that means that you aren't married.

It was in the Labour manifesto I think. It basically totally devalues marriage as an Institution and would make everyone buy individual properties for fear of losing half in the event of a relationship breakdown. Labour need to stop interfering. Can you imagine the bloke ending a relationship on the evening before his girlfriend would acquire these instant property rights? Yes I can. Outrageous proposal basically. Wonder what Burnham thinks lol?

It basically totally devalues marriage as an Institution

It absolutely does. It devalues the choice of people who want to get married, and it devalues the choice of people who don't want to get married... just to try to pacify people who aren't really bothered one way or the other and/or don't actually understand what marriage is anyway.

I think we’ve got it right. You’re married or you’re not.

There is no such thing as common law marriage, but the Department of Work and Pensions, and I think HMRC as well, have been treating cohabiting couples as if they were married or civilly partnered for years now. They do so because that is advantageous to the state - meaning reduced entitlement to benefits etc. So, it's understandable that individuals who've been treated as if they were married when it suits the government might expect also to be treated as if they were married when it suits them - except it hasn't worked that way.

I've always thought this flexible, but only when it suits the state, approach to coupledom was very unfair. And misleading.

People should not end up in a contract by default. We already have the legal contract for this. The solution for people too stubborn or too stupid to use it is not create a backdoor, nebulous system of obligation.

I have been with my DP for 26 years, lived together almost all of those. No intention to marry ever.

I do see the reasons for this, and am not totally against it. You read all the time about women who thought they would get married one day, who are left vulnerable when their partner leaves them.

I consciously opted out of marriage, but many don’t, they end up in that situation, maybe with (D)Ps who are abusive and protecting themselves financially.

On the other hand, while I would never get married, civil partnerships are now an option, which have less of what I see as the social ‘baggage’ of marriage, and we will probably do this eventually as since we had kids are finances are intertwined anyway. Before kids, for 12 years we actively chose not to mix our finances and I would not have wanted any automatic rights to each others assets at that time.

Maybe something could be done to better protect women who have children outside marriage and may be SAHM’s who are then financially very vulnerable in the event of breakup, or may feel forced to stay with an abusive partner?

In Scotland I think we cohabitees do have some rights, in that if my DP should pass away, I have some automatic rights to inherit the contents of the house. I can’t remember the specifics but it’s a small practical thing which I think is sensible.