Should unmarried couples have more rights?

[Niceguy2]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12354670

What do MN'ers think? Should unmarried couples get more rights to claim from each other like married couples?

Or if they wanted that then they should get married?

Well if it's so outdated why are you so keen to be married but without actually getting married?

Your argument is in favour of compulsory marriage for all co-habiting couples.

If marriage is so outdated, why would you want that?

aaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!

I get you sea...The thought of being someones wife is ridiculous to me

And will there be a new non-married contract necessary for couples who don't want the obligations of marriage imposed on them?

Surely in a free society you should opt in to legal obligations rather than have them imposed by default and have to opt out?

The thought of having an ill-advised ex-boyfriend I lived with in my 20s claim a share of my property when we broke up sounds crazy to me.

but what is outdated? the basis of marriage is legal declaration that a couple are together, to repeat my post above you can call it what you like but at the end of the day its still marriage. I think that by making it a default after so many years of living together your are actually forcing people into a 'married like state' and thats wrong

but why does it make you someone's wife, surely if you choose not to use the term then your not, also at the end of the day its just a word, use it don't use it. I'm married and therefore a wife however that doesn't define me as a person.

Then I think the whole meaning of marriage is lost ... the whole point of getting married is to be man and wife surely?

i think a judge would be able to differentiate between couples co-habiting for a fortnight and couples like usual and I (ob we're not a couple ) who have been together for a very long time

scotland has something in place apparently

but what of the widow who if she re-marries loses her husbands pension, meets someone and cohabits. If in the eyes of the law she gains the legal rights of married after cohabiting for say 2 years, you can bet your bottom dollar that the company paying out that pension would pull the plug.

What does "meaning" have to do with anything?

It's a legal contract, any meaning you imbue it with is your affair.

"man and wife" ffs

But what about couples that lived together for years and were not a couple?

What is wrong with signing- "Cohabitant Agreement But Definitely Not Marriage"

exactly spidookly and also why should the government spend time and money changing legislation just because some people don't like the words marriage and wife! There are far more important things they should be legislating on.

FFs to you too ... do you not say this when you get married? I don't want to be anyones wife is that so hard to understand?

What about people who want to live together forever but never be treated as though married?

You currently have a choice, but what you want is to remove that choice from everyone.

dear god its like going back 50 years on MN some times

i still don't understand why you smug marrieds care so much that us with long term partners would just like the law to be a little fairer!! how does it affect you exactly?

So, let me get this straight, you want all the legal rights and obligations of marriage but you don't want your relationship to be defined as a marriage or to be called a wife? Is that right?

No, it is perfectly easy to understand someone choosing not to be married.

It is not easy to understand someone who wants the law to treat them as a wife without them having any say in the matter.

but the law is fair if you want your partnership to be legally recognised then you have it legally recognised, its called marriage. By making a married like state compulsory after x years of cohabiting i'd feel that was legally unfair.

southeastra I'll tell you how it affects me, if my husband died/left me and I met somebody else and wanted then to move in, I do not want that person to have any legal rights in our relationship until I explicitly choose to let them.

and if my dp died tomorrow i would have no rights at all even though we have been together for over 20 years - joint own a house and have two children?

all i'm saying is that i find it entirely fair that a court would be lenient in looking at my case and deciding if i could be due the same as someone who was legally married.

to be that seems logical and in this century totally fair..

Why do you assume to speak for all co-habiting couples?

You want to force all co-habiting couples into marriage regardless of preference, and you think nobody else should get a say in that?

I don't want to live in a country where the state forces itself into private living arrangements unasked. It absolutely does affect me if the government can pass laws that impose obligations on citizens without their consent, and possibly retrospectively.

You can indulge your adolescent objections to certain words by drawing up legal agreements to give yourself the protections of marriage if you choose.

You are being denied nothing, yet still you seek to deny choice to others.

I think that it is terrible that so many people, especially women, are left financially devastated when their 'common-law' relationship ends and they find themselves unprotected.

The solution to the problem is to educate people so that they are 100% clear that living with somebody (for not matter how long a period) confers no statutory rights at all. If they want rights then they need to get married.

Failing to educate people, and changing the law to try and apply a sticking plaster new rights to the problem seems to be over-complicating the situation.