Men - a meal ticket for life?

[marantha]

Reading the amount of abuse the poster Washwithcare has received here over the past few days for suggesting that her husband does not offer more money to his ex-partner (not NOT married, no contract signed) and her (not biologically HIS) children it strikes me that feminism doesn't really exist- or only exists when it suits women.
Women are still baby machines that try to get as much money off a man as they can, when the chips are down.
AIBU?

luckymummy2010 Right, I don't believe you are a lawyer.
Why, if you are a lawyer, can't you arrange your affairs so that you're effectively married without being married?

Why the call for cohabitee rights? You're a clever person, why do you need them? Surely you can work it out for yourself?

And I'm afraid you're the bigot if you want to make everyone married when they've not asked for it.

Did I say there was? And you are shouting now...I shall take my leave before you burst a blood vessel

I am sorry, but I refuse to believe that a lawyer would need, for one second, to rely on outside help in the form of "cohabitee rights" to sort it out for them. It makes no sense at all.

I don't need rights, my affairs are entirely in order (not that that is any of your business) but others are not in my position, and part of a civilised society is to protect those who need protecting

Yes, you did several pages back. You moaned that the tories would not bring them in any time soon.

Can I not be concerned for others? Would my views only be self interest? Perhaps that's an unfamiliar concept to you.

Something about inheritance laws, you seriously cannot expect me to believe that a lawyer could not find a way around this problem somehow. There are ways of dealing with this problem I am sure for a clever lawyer.

Yes, inheritance tax - my point is to treat people equallly on tax and not give handouts to married people. But don't you worry (I am sure that's concern in your tone...) I have that covered too. But others don't even know about inheritance tax for cohabitants and can lose their home on death of a DP. Or is that OK with you?

The law is clear. Get married, and you get a raft of protection (and responsibilities, don't forget that). Don't get married and you won't. There are consequences to not getting married, just as there are consequences to getting married.

Why is there a need to muddy the waters, luckymummy?

A right to one person, is a responsility to the partner and vice versa. The law should not impose rights and responsibilities without the parties choosing to expressly.

Maybe as a lawyer you can help to draft watertight quasi-marriage contracts for the marriage-shy.

Well you see that's the point, the law isn't clear (and it's not for spouses/civil partners either because it hasn't been reformed significantly since the 1970's so doesn't reflect today's society). There is a host of law to protect cohabitants, including the Trusts of land and Appointment of Trustees Act (to protect cohabitants who have contributed to a property), Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989 (the court can order a family home to be occupied by a cohabitant and a child for the child's minority) and of course the CSA provisions. Its a jumble of different remedies that are hard for people to navigate. More clarity is needed and any changes (which are in fact very unlikely beacuse of political issues)would most likely only compensate cohabitants who have changed their circumstances because they had a child, or contributed to a property in their partner's sole name etc.

My points are however:

Marriage is not a "superior" relationship - its simply one choice
Some people require protection - that's the purpose of many of our laws (eg criminal, domestic abuse etc)and most protective laws don't require an "opt in"
Tax should not discriminate between families depending on whether they choose to get married - there should be no hand outs to married couples and I will happy tick a box on my tax return to say I am cohabiting as I do on many other forms.

And frankly, that's all I have to say

luckymummy, I would hardly agree against the need for more clarity.

Surely the mishmash of laws to protect co-habitants is an argument to opt for the clearer position which marriage confers.

I am not aware of any tax laws favouring me just because I am one half of a married couple.

I thought the only impact that marriage has on inheritance tax is that the matrimonial home in both parties' names is presumed to be held by jointly rather than as tenants-in-common and passes on death on one party to the other without attracting inheritance tax. But there is nothing to stop cohabitees to sort their legal affairs so that they hold the property as joint tenants. As a married person, I have in fact severed the joint tenancy because it is more tax-efficient inheritance tax-wise to do so. It is not difficult to arrange one's legal affairs in relation to the property irrespective of marital status.

argue against

My position (as I have said on some of marantha's other threads) is that I agree with marantha on this cohabitation thing.

I think the problem on MN is that most people are coming at the situation from the position of cohabiting parents with children, and naturally see that this rule would benefit them.

However not everyone who cohabits is in a stable partnership with children. I don't even know if the majority of cohabiting relationships are like that.

A vast number of people are randomly shacked up with people who they think are OK, and who they have a laugh with, but who they aren't in a permanent relationship with. I lived with someone for a few years when I was younger, I would never have married him. I knew for years it wasn't right but didn't get rounf to kicking him out as we got on well. Under these rules we would have been tied togetehr as if married? I held assets, he would have got half of them? Even though he had contributed nothing and our relationship was never going to be forever?

It doesn't make sense. These things should be opt in not opt out. With these proposals people will end up tied to each other by accident, and then an awful lot of them will get a horrible shock when they split up. Where once someone quietly moved out and everyone proceeded as usual, now it will be lawyers and expense and unforeseen complications.

As things stand you can opt-in by marriage, others have suggested an additional civil partnership option (marriage with a different name). All fine. To legally tie people together when they have not indicated that that is what they wish is bizarre, and unfair on the (large?) proportion of people for whom protection is neither needed nor desirable.

So there you have it

A simple statistic to cut through all the judgements - 46% of children born to parents who are not married

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6227283/Proportion-of-births-outside-marriag e-has-risen-to-highest-ever-level.html

This is not a minority issue, its not for people in their 20s seeing if they fancy living together for a couple of years - many, many families do not involve marriage. You can either ignore it and say "just get married" or look at the reality - society has (and is) changing and the laws relating to families need to adapt to that.

luckymummy2010 I have never said that I believe marriage to be a superior relationship to cohabitation- there are those who marry who are in love, and those who in love who do not marry.

Your second point interests me a great deal- i.e. your comment about people -of which some no doubt will be female, let's be honest probably 90% of them will be- needing "protection" . You are saying then that we should effectively NOT trust women to handle their own domestic/personal affairs and that they need someone to sort it out for them. I am pretty sure that some ladies here would bristle at the thought of that!

In fact, this is precisely WHY I started this thread- are women silly little creatures who require paternalistic protection in form of cohabitee rights or are they grown up enough to look after themselves- they can't be both.

luckymummy2010 To answer your question: if the price of personal freedom and the right to live with another adult on my OWN terms means that some people lose their homes on the death of a partner because they didn't bother to find out their financial status lose out then I am afraid to say it is a price worth paying to keep the law out of grown adults' bedrooms.

luckymummy2010 You say you are a lawyer- do you honestly think if society went back in time and took the attitude that women needed protection because they are silly little creatures who can't cope with their lives females would even be allowed to enter the professions?

Are you Baroness Deech in disguise? (try Google if you aren't and don't know who that is - you would love her!)

[sighs....and walks away from this pointless thread]

Had to google Baroness Deech and cohabitation. I must say that even though I had never before heard of the lady she does talk a great deal of sense on this issue.

Oh and look- even people (readers comments on this issue of cohabitee rights) from The Guardian and The Independent and The Times (not just the bigots at the Mail) think cohabitee rights are a stupid idea.

Yeah, the great Baroness is absolutely right.
I do not regard it as an insult to be "accused" of having similar views to her.

blahblahblah

Luckymummy your statistic "46% of children born to parents who are not married" does not do anything to help your argument.

What you need to tell me is how many of all cohabiting relationships involve children. I haven't been able to find that statistic anywhere. I do not believe that the vast majority of people living together have children, by a long shot.

"This is not a minority issue, its not for people in their 20s seeing if they fancy living together for a couple of years"

Well yes it is isn't it. All of those people will be tied to each other.

I would argue that people who have children need to have the maturity and responsibility to opt in to some protection for themselves.

That it should not be left to people just out of school to opt out - (is that even possible?) - because they won't.

Why should people have to hand over inheritances and hard earned money to people who are potentially nothing more than a mate who it's convenient to share a flat with? When there are no children involved?

I suppose maybe this legislation wouldn't be so bad if it applied only to people who had been cohabiting for x years (would need to be a long time) AND had children together.

Otherwise it is simply ridiculous.

ImSoNotTelling I agree that the statistic about 46% of children born... means little in itself.

To be honest it is a bit of a non-sequitur because children- rightly- have to be provided for by both parents- married or not.

The whole: "What about the children?" argument is a red herring.

I believe that when considering the case of a cohabiting couple with children who are breaking-up, a judge must put the children's interests first, anyway.
Is it not the case that a judge can order that the child and main carer (usually mum) can stay in the family home even if she has not paid a penny towards that home until child reaches a certain age, anyway?
OK, she may have to leave when the child is an adult, but to be honest considering that she may not have paid towards the house this, IMO, is fair enough.

You are right, though, it is TOTALLY ridiculous to apply cohabitee rules to childless people. For goodness sake, they are adults- let them sort it out for themselves.

I also believe that even in today's politically correct times, most people- from the richest to the poorest, the educated to the non-educated, realise that there IS a fundamental difference between cohabitation and marriage.

The truth is this: lawyers would absolutely adore cohabitee rights.
Less marriage= less divorce= less work for them.

What to do, then? Apply legal status to a situation currently out of the law i.e. cohabitation and make money out of arena that is fraught with complexity and doubt.

Cynical I know.

Lawyers may be clever people but I don't think they particularly "care" about their clients.

Other then doing their professional best for them, of course.

Law Commission Report

www.lawcom.gov.uk/docs/cp179_overview.pdf

2001 census - 2 million cohabiting couples. 1.25 children dependant on a cohabiting couple (see para 2.5)

Re "common law marriage" para 2.15 "Fifty-six per cent of
respondents to the British Social Attitudes Survey conducted in 2000 believed,
wrongly, that English law recognises cohabitants as ?common law spouses? once
they have lived together for some period of time. This misconception was higher
still (59%) among cohabitants themselves."

See also the case of Burns para 2.1 for an example of the hardship women can suffer after bringing up their children in a cohabiting relationship.

I won't respond to the lawyer digs nor the childish references to flat sharers - you know the answer to that

It would be a very backwards society that didn't have any regard for those who may need help. The "Im alright Jack" approach saddens me. And its not paternalism, the law protects those who need it, without changes in the law women wouldn't have the right to vote and we wouldn't have the Sex Discrimination Act, Equal Pay Act etc.