Labour and common law marriage pledge

[SlamPunked]

I heard about this today, and I'm keen to know what non-married childfree people think of it? Especially how it applies to childfree people.

It's essentially a pledge from Labour to give cohabiting couples similar rights on separation to married couples. The pledge lacks details, but there are models in other countries that could be followed.

Obviously I understand the benefits for many individuals (people with children, people who are victims of abuse). However, I (40W) have purposefully decided not to marry my partner (55M) to protect my assets (been together over 10 years).

We both came to the relationship with nothing apart from debt. But now I have a really well-paid job that has allowed us both to pay off our debts and buy a house (get a mortgage) as equal owners.

But I earn a lot more than him (4x his salary) and save a lot of money in my pension. He tends to waste his money on clothes and hobbies, and has no pension to speak of. Day-to-day I cover bills, holidays etc, he pays for food and trips to the pub. If we break up (you never know what the future holds), I don't want him to have a claim on my pension too when I've already been bankrolling him for many years.

It isn't clear what a reform would do exactly, but it also feels a bit unfair in my case. If I wanted him to have a claim on my savings, I would have married him.

I would love others' perspectives, especially for how it applies to childfree people. Maybe I'm just being an arse, but when I read about the pledge I automatically thought "oh no". The pledge is pitched as something to help women who have sacrificed their career for children. But what about career women who have climbed the ladder, and have a lower earning partner? I'm not saying I want the former to suffer for my sake, instead I'm asking for nuance in how it's applied.

Maybe, just to make it crystal clear, people could organise full-blown non-weddings and invite all their family and friends along to celebrate their continued state of non-marriage, with a disco and a buffet, and make their solemn vows:

"I DO NOT take thee as my lawfully wedded wife/husband."

"With all my worldly goods I thee DO NOT endow."

And when you get older, say 60. Which I nearly am. So currently had my DP live with me in my house for 12 years. I paid off the house before he moved in.
If this law comes in, he leaves and wants his half I'd have to sell my house to give him his share. Remortgaging at 60+ isnt really an option and I dont have the savings to pay him off.

So I sell my house, we both now need housing. Neither of us can afford to buy, see being 60, too old for a Mortgage. We both end up renting for ever.

Nah, not a great idea.

I have absolutely no intention of forfeiting any advantage I’ve gained from thinking carefully about the consequences of bad life choices to protect people who blundered around not thinking. And I don’t feel any responsibility for doing this, either. Piss off taking liberties with my hard-won liberties.

We all know that the reason that this happens is that many, many women are so desperate to be mothers that they’ll ignore 100 red flags and shonky promises and have kids with whichever selfish arsehole is around at the time. It’s a deeply, deeply unpopular opinion, particularly on the rest of this site, but we need to encourage more young women to have different goals in life, and to take responsibility for their own financial security. But suggesting that generates screaming fury on here at least twice a day.

I don’t think HMRC can routinely check your marital status, and I’m not sure how closely they check when they make the claim.

I’m not eligible so don’t claim, but have transferred assets to my spouse tax free. There’s no legal record of my marriage in this country as I got married abroad. I do have a marriage certificate if I ever had to prove it, but I don’t think HMRC have ever had sight of it. I suspect they mostly trust who you say you’re married to, and maybe check they have the same address as you…

Piss off taking liberties with my hard-won liberties

100 percent this. A colleague said in March 2020 that some civil liberties are worth giving up. No they bloody aren't.

Assuming he hasn't been paying market rent, he already has a case for a beneficial interest accrued over time, if it went to court as it stands the likelihood is he would get something out.

i doubt it? no mortage so no payment towards the mortage on his behalf.

But it's on public record who is and who is married - at least the people who married in the UK.

I'm not necessarily saying that they should give people this right without asking them to claim, although they could easily publicise it more, if they wanted to; it's just that, they don't have trouble changing things and giving themselves new powers when it suits them, so there would be no issue with them cross-referencing the two records to which they have access, should they so wish. They could even send out letters to all adults, or just add something in to the envelope when they're writing to you anyway.

Ironically (for this thread at least), I'm guessing that one of their reasons for not properly publicising it is because of all the many complaints they'd get from people who've not bothered to get married but still don't see why they shouldn't get a tax break that's squarely designed for married people.

Also, if it’s about the children, it should only apply where two people have a child together. That way, only parents have to give up their civil liberties for the choice they made to have a kid together, whereas people who have no intention of having or can’t have kids can carry on as they wish. Rather than, you know, having their relationships dictated by some random couple having a baby.

No he's not paid rent, or paid for renovations or big ticket items.

Chances are he could get something, not half a house though, and I think if I offered enough at the solicitors letter stage I could avoid court and fees and still own a house after the split. And if it was going to be bitter and end up in court I could show how much he had saved by living rent free, which would mitigate somewhat. After all at this point if he had bought his own house he'd be over half way paid off.

Does it ? I've never heard of it before , are you sure ? I'm not going through so much Scotland shit to find out . I've never heard of it before.

Section 25 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006.

There's an explanation here.
https://www.thorntons-law.co.uk/for-you/thorntons-family-law-divorce-solicitors/cohabitation-rights-in-scotland

I'm not child free but, even when I was, I would strongly object to this proposal. If they actually ever brought such a hideously ill thought through policy in, then they should have the forethought to make defacto prenuptial agreements legally binding at the same time.

This really shouldn't apply to anyone who doesn't share a DC. The idea to give an unmarried DM some more legal rights might be viable, but I don't want the state taking away my rights because some people fail to safeguard their own. Long term living together, mutual wills/POAs so we've made efforts to protect each other but that's our decision.

I think this plan is disgusting and patronising. There is a good reason why I won't get married. My house is for my children one day if I haven't had to burn up equity for care. My partner has not contributed to it at all. I can't vote labour for this reason amongst others. It's a dickhead policy and shows they are the same as ever with their inability to consider the impact of their plans.

We have this where we live and it works fine. It doesn't apply to all assets and doesn't offer the same level of protection as marriage. It only applies to assets acquired while together, excluding inherited assets. So the house you've owned for 40 years but shared for 10 wouldn't be split 50:50, it'd be 3/4 solely yours and the remaining quarter split 50:50.

On an expensive house that could be a chunk of money

I can't do the maths but say a 1 million pound house?

Can someone else work that out please.

Btw my house is not worth nearly that much, but it's all I have. Bar a few thou savings. I dont think I could find (I think 125k) down the back of the sofa, I could not borrow that much. So I'm back to selling the house to pay his share.

I’m okay if they come up with some sort of legal process that isn’t marriage but it is something you have to legally file and have witnessed.

Surely this already exists in the form of civil partnership?

Agree with everyone else - this is a huge 'mansplain' from Labour and like all mansplaining, it's both unwelcome and inaccurate.

What if one person thinks they were on a break and shags around, but the other person doesn't?!

Joking but it could raise the question of whether cheating means you break the non-existent contract. "No, Rachel, the fact I slept with someone else proves we're not a commited "common law couple" so I'm chucking you out! "

It could indeed lead to a rise in people (with children or not) breaking up a relationship on purpose just before the two year mark. It doesn't automatically protect the lower earners/asset-poorer - it might just mean they get dumped more quickly.

This could be an absolute minefield to calculate, though.

What if the equity in the house hasn't built up steadily over that time, but values have rocketed in, say, the last 5 years?

At any rate, saying it doesn't apply to all assets but 'only' a large chunk of the value of your house - for a great many of us, our house IS the vast majority of our assets.

I’m married but lived with DH beforehand, we both had our own equity and would have been very skittish about living together if common law marriage was a thing. I didn’t want any obligation until I have consciously and voluntarily signed up to it.

However a provision for when children are involved is perfectly reasonable I think.

Those seem to be extremely limited rights though - not 'similar to married couples' at all.

No rights to pension, no rights to property unless you can show significant financial contribution, and a default assumption of no rights to any other assets unless you can show 1 party had a significant detriment or benefit from the cohabitation (such as giving up work to care for children).

I've read legal blogs which describe Scotland's cohabitation rights as "conservative" in comparison with those in Australia and New Zealand.

Legal blogs say things similar to this:
"Emily Thornberry MP made an announcement at the Labour Party Conference 2023, that a Labour government would reform the law for cohabiting couples. This would give cohabitees increased rights to accessing financial support on the breakdown of their relationship and bring cohabiting couples types of protection similar to that enjoyed by married couples."

I haven't found the actual text of the speech, nor anything further directly from Labour Party sources. If there's nothing in the manifesto, I suppose we'll have to guess what they propose.