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?

No, Katz, as currently construed marriage and civil partnership are for couples in a sexual relationships. There isn't really a mechanism for registering non-sexual partnerships. Only siblings are disbarred, but I think there is an argument for widening the scope of cp to any couple that wants it, and making marriage, as currently understood, available to all couples in a sexual relationship.

CP would not involve a ceremony, just signing the register, marriage (now open to gay couples) would carry on largely as before.

People unwilling to make a legal commitment still free to moan about how unfair it is that they aren't treated the same as those who did.

"I think any couple (straight, gay, co-parents not in a sexual partnership, friends, siblings) that lives together should have the option of legally registering that relationship to receive certain legal protections and take on certain obligations to each other."

So it's going to be a register, that you sign, with witnesses, are charged for and with a legal process for cancelling the agreement.

So for couples it is basically marriage with the name tippexed out. Maybe we could just leave the word "marriage" off of the certificate and let people pop what ever word they want in it's place.

It's interesting to note that those opposed to this can come up with objections to the three main ways that this can work:

1. Register - Marriage by another name
2. Automatic after X years - When did the relationship start? What about house mates?
3. Courts discretion - Having to justify your relationship to a judge and risk the galling moment when it may be ruled that you weren't a "proper" couple.

Meanwhile most of the people in favour are making vague noises about it being the 21st century and that "something" should be done but seem unable to explain what that "something" is or answer any of the objections.

Frankly I think fuck the lot of you unless you have kids.

Some may think that harsh but IMO if you are a couple you should have the same rights as a married couple, I.E none at all really you are both adults who can work and pay your own way (obviously with disabilities that would be a different case).

if you have kids regardless of your situation you should have the same rights and those rights should favour the best interests of the kids.

forget rights for married, rights should be for the family or the main carer should a couple split up and thats it.

Change the whole system to benefit children only.

I don't know why the married give a toss really unless they only got married for the legal protection...how bloody cold and calculating is that

"I don't know why the married give a toss"

So we shouldn't care about all the other people that would be affected by a silly change in the law?

To me this is nothing about protecting the "sanctity" of marriage and everything to do with having a sensible and workable legal system.

Oh and also I've lived with other people before, both in relationships and just as friends, and the idea of one of them popping up and claiming any of my assets is just nightmarish.

The reason 'marrieds' as you've put it give a toss is because I think that a mechanism exists to protect those who want to have legal protection. A default of x years cohabitation or x number of children is an erosion of a persons civil rights. I made a point above about a widow who meets someone new following the death of her husbands but if she remarries she loses her husbands pension. Where would the law stand on her cohabitation because you can't have one rule for some unmarried cohabiting couples and another for others. Does that mean because some people don't like the idea or connotations of the words wife or married she is unable to cohabit?

I never read such a load of cop-outs. All this bleating about servitude and ooh I couldn't be a wife. Honestly. It really does feel like the 50's here and not for the reasons implied. Guess what, marriage is what you make of it. No one carves 'wife' on your forehead or stands over you with a loaded shotgun while you write mrs on your cheques. You're obviously afraid of something though fuck knows what. You really think that marriage is harder to get out of than kids and a mortgage? You think that after 25 years you're not a wife in all but name? Ha ha ha ha.

I don't give two tosses what anyone else does. But you've got two choices. Sign the bloody register ad get this coveted recognition. Or carry on as you are but shut the hell up about it.

Ryoko so you want to ban families without children?

Your mother really did a number on you.

Badger I think making it easier for any kind of co-habiting couple to declare a legal partnership would be useful and not identical to marriage.

People who wanted to get married still could, but it would be preferable to any system of de facto or presumed marriage in offering a simple alternative that covered more people and was opt in.

Haven't read the article yet, but I do think it would be a good thing for the changes to modern family life to be better recognised by the Powers That Be. Since they do wield power over us in terms of being able to confer legal rights, etc, it seems incredibly out of date to have either legally-recognised marriage or not legally-recognised cohabiting as the only commitment options for hetero couples.

But why speedy there is a quick and easy mechanism to have your relationship recognised legally. You go to the registary office and sign the register. I can't see how any other system could be enforcable. The neon group of people who would benefit from this aren't the women who are cohabiting with men who refuse to get married but the lawyers who'll drag this through the courts. It's been said before how do you prove when you started cohabiting and what the relationship was.

I have heard a straight couple are fighting for the right to become civil partners, I wonder if they are successful and you can even just do it by post people will still be complaining that they shouldn't have to do that. One poster on here has said they wouldn't sign it. I would like to bet people would still be agitating about wanting right just by default. I think it is ridiculous to expect the law to guess what you want, what if one parter is dead do you then get Doris Stokes in to sort it out.

Not giving rights to people who are not willing to write their name on a piece of paper saying they want them seems perfectly fair to me. It give options to all the many many people who don't want them. Do others think it would be better if we had some sort of register that people signed to say they didn't want somebody they lived with seen as a partner, because some sort of opt out would have to be introduced.

My DP and I have been together for almost 10 years now and neither of us even wants to think about marriage before 30, now from my experience we have lasted a hell of a lot longer than some marriages.

So my question would be why is it that a couple who have been together 3 years and married for 2 years should have more rights than us?

Neither of us have been in a serious relationship before hand as we met at school (now 24/25YO) so there would be no one else to come out of the woodwork.

I would like to think that we could sort anything out amongst ourselves without having to bugger about with lawyers etc but if we had to go down that route I would like to think that people would'nt be looking down their noses at us for not getting married. At teh end of teh day people who get married for the sake of a 'legal contract' is a lot worse than an unwed couple, bbut then again this is probably why we have such a high divorce rate!

"So my question would be why is it that a couple who have been together 3 years and married for 2 years should have more rights than us?"

Because they've had their partnership legally recognised. There's a clear start point to it and from that point various rights kick in.

When do those same rights kick in for you?

You might say "oh but it's obvious that we're a couple", but the law doesn't work that way, you have to define what a couple is.

Exactly when and how would you get these additional rights?

Automatically after X years?

By signing a register?

By going before a court if you break up and having to argue to a Judge that you became a "real" couple at some point in time while your ex argues that you were just house mates?

I don't agree with a heterosexual couple being able to have a civil partnership because in my opinion it would devalue a CP to lesser than marriage. So there would be marriage and then the lesser commitment of a CP. Currently, in the eyes of the law a CP is to all intents and purposes a marriage, its just called something different to appease some people in this country. i would have call it all marriage personally.

Mamadive - if you don't mind me asking, why are you waiting until your 30 to get married? I met my DH when we were both at school, we got married at 20 and are still together 13 years later, some people said we were too young but at the end of the day, some relationships break up some don't. I'm not sure why waiting until 30 would have made a difference?

Katz it's just something we always agreed on because neither of us have had a great experience with marriage generally, both or parents got married v.young and subsequently both marriages ended VERY badly and fathers never to be seen again...

I know everyone is different but although we are happy together we just don't want to make that msitake, I know it does'nt reLLY MAKE SENSE TO OTHERS BUT IT DOES IN SOME WAY TO US.

Oops sorry did'nt mean to lock the caps on there... looks all shouty

"Katz it's just something we always agreed on because neither of us have had a great experience with marriage generally"

So you would surely disagree with any system that basically said "right you're now married" after a certain period of time without your consent?

So that leaves either a register that you would sign to recognise your partnership (marriage basically) or having to go before a court to argue about whether or not you really were and when you became a couple.

The first is pointless, it's marriage by another name, and the second is an awful concept. I want to tell the state that I'm in a partnership I don't want the state to tell me whether my relationship fits into whatever narrow box the law defines.

This isn't about trying to deny a group of people rights. It's about trying to protect people and give them the right to decide when to involve the law, with it's associated rights, in their lives and relationships.

but mamadive that could have happened even if your parents hadn't been married and looking at current statistics would suggest that unmarried couples are more likely to split than married couples. I guess for me whilst I wanted to be married it didn't make a difference to our relationship once we'd done it, DH didn't turn into an oppressor demanding i darned his socks once the ink was dry on the certificate. I got married because i loved him and wanted to spend the rest of my life with him and wanted to make this declaration formal. We had originally planned to get married when we were older, because people just don't get married half way through university, but we then both sat down and thought about it, getting married in 8 months, 18 months or 18 years, we still want to be together and be married. Did raise more than a few eyebrows when we bought the wedding forward to 6 months time!!!!

The way I see it at the moment people have two choices, they can-

1. Choose to get married- that has it own costs and benefits

1. Choose to live together- that has different costs and benefits

Choose option 1 or 2 whatever suits you best both you are entirely free to make.

Seem to me people agitating for change want to take away option 2.

"Seem to me people agitating for change want to take away option 2."

As I said earlier the people in favour of this aren't really saying exactly what they do want. There's a vague concept that they want more rights for unmarried couples but no explanation as to exactly how that could be done and no answers to the objections that people have been raised.

I don't get the not wanting to be 'married' business.

If the legal rights of marriage we available to you be going to a solictor and signing a document would you do that? If so then it's no different to going to the register office and getting 'married'. Is it the vows that are an issue?

I personally just don't see why someone should be defined by whether they are married or not!

I agree that there should be some sort of safe guarding but there is'nt really a way to do it without forcing people to sign a document of some sort .

Although it does say a lot about our culture nowadays when we have to even think about signing something to stop money grabbers!

Surely before they would sort it out amongst themselves!

"I personally just don't see why someone should be defined by whether they are married or not!"

Well they're not. But from the point of view of this discussion, rights after a break up, the marriage marks a legally recognisable point when assets where pooled and both parties take certain legal responsibilities towards each other.

"I agree that there should be some sort of safe guarding but there is'nt really a way to do it without forcing people to sign a document of some sort"

OK so couples will have to sign a document, and there will also have to be a corresponding legal process to get the document undone. You couldn't just allow one person to run off and withdraw their consent leaving the other high and dry.

So a legally binding signing process and a legally binding cancellation process.

So, as people have already said, isn't that really pretty much what marriage is?

And why bother with a host of new rules, things for lawyers to charge for and cards for Clinton's to sell when marriage does what is required already and the only benefit of this new thing would be for people to be able to pretend that they're not married and come up with some other term for the same thing.

"I personally just don't see why someone should be defined by whether they are married or not!"

I completely agree, but this is the situation for all women, married or not- Miss/Mrs/Ms Men don't have this problem, they are all Mr and it baffles me why all women have not chosen to call themselves Ms.

The anti marriage people seem to be very dated in their ideas of what marriage is. The only difference I can see is that the married couples have made a positive decision that they want to be seen as a couple. Unmarried haven't, so I'm sure some of them don't want all the rights and obligations of marriage.