Legal protection for unmarried SAHMs

[lilyaldrin]

Basically, what do I need to do to confer the same financial/legal protection as marriage would?

We have joint children and although we don't currently own property together, we hope to in the next few years.

First thing I'm tackling is wills leaving everything to each other. What next?

That is what I thought FeisMom. It seems mad to have got children, be doing childcare and not having discussed it.

It's just too low down the priority list, risks lots of headlines about trying to destroy marriage and is just far too complex to deal with quickly.

It's not only complex, it also is not at all clear what "deal(ing) with" it means.

If you're 22, or 32, what some people want is that cohabitation gives rights like joint tenancies, some marriage-lite rights over mutual children, etc.

But take for example an elderly widow and widower who move in together, for companionship in old age. They each sell their houses, purchase somewhere jointly, and each have reasonable incomes from pensions and the like. Their wills are drawn in favour of their own children and the property is a tenants in common protecting the equity they both brought to the relationship. One of them becomes frail, the other dies, and the frail partner's children decide to have a crack at getting some of the deceased partner's assets. For extra entertainment, perhaps one of the frail partner's children had moved in to the spare room to help care for their parent. That's a case where it would be iniquitous to create some sort of retrospective marriage-lite solely by dint of their cohabitation, and it seems wrong that they would have to enter into complex legal instruments to keep their assets separate.

Thanks for explaining Tess. So far marriage hasn't offered me enough advantages, particularly in relation to autonomy over the children. Although he would want and intend to do the best thing for the children, he wouldn't actually. I think it's not about money for me. Sorry OP if I'm hijacking.

Friday your example of the elderly couple would surely mean it would be a good thing to have a retrospective marriage-lite for co-habiting couples? That's what I'm hoping for, especially after 30 years of wiping someone's tea stains off the worktop.

your example of the elderly couple would surely mean it would be a good thing to have a retrospective marriage-lite for co-habiting couples

Seriously? Two people aged 75 are widowed, sell their houses and move in together. Two years later one of them dies. In the absence of a will, all the deceased partner's assets go to the other, and their children are disinherited? Then the second partner dies, and their children get the whole lot, while the first partner's children get nothing? How would that be just?

That's what I'm hoping for, especially after 30 years

But in my example, there would have been two years. They're different scenarios. That's why it would be incredibly complex to create something that covers all the cases.

This thread prompted a heated conversation with DP last night.

His attitude is that men in what he calls "traditional set-ups" go out to work and earn money which "enables" their partners to do more of the childcare. It sounded like he thinks men are doing women a big favour and that is not an attitude I want to be married to.

To be fair he did once say he would love to be a SAHP but I've never been that convinced he would enjoy it as much as he thinks. Besides until men can have babies and breastfeed for 6 months that's not always going to be the easiest option. Once I'd taken a year off anyway and put the time into getting a routine up and running , it made more sense for me to go back part-time (plus I was the lower earner by a long way).

For the record I am not SAHM but work-partime and still do 95% of the childcare.

Friday - I think this is precisely why the law needs to be addressed for inheritance, there should be a right to stay in the marital home, at least for a period of time.

And if you've been cleaning up your partner's teastains / or he's been changing your lightbulbs for 30 years there should also be some recognition for that.

Perhaps it should be done on a percentage basis as it is with equity in property - there should be an equity advantage over time.

It seems so wrong to me that people marry a rich man / woman, divorce two years later and get half their life's work, which then goes to their new family.

The 50% split is also a bit of a myth passedgo - there's no automatic entitlement to half the assets. If there's a huge amount of money (so not 99.9% of cases) then once you've given each party enough to provide for their needs and the children, then essentially only that built up during the marriage is split. So you can't marry a multi-millionaire and then walk away with half of what s/he has built up a couple of years later.

"It seems so wrong to me that people marry a rich man / woman, divorce two years later and get half their life's work, which then goes to their new family"

I agree theres an argument that each case should be considered on its own merits.

I've been married with no children. I decided to leave and left the marital home (I was a joint tenant) . I didn't make a claim on the house or my husbands assets because what I wanted was freedom more than anything. I moved away and started from scratch.

Now I am not married and have children but if we were to break up my main concern would be that the children should stay in the family home. We own the house jointly and have separate bank accounts. Obviously our finances are merged and I do not earn enough to pay the mortgage on my own.

However if I were to want to end the relationship why should I automatically get half of my partner's money. As long as the children are provided for and we agree about custody that should be the main consideration.

So even in divorce, nothing is straightforward and you can't guarantee an equal or fair division of assets. The only support is for the children and their mother (who in this day and age, by the time divorce actually happens) will be earning her own money anyway.

I still don't get it. I think the thing that I would fear most is DP's family getting involved with the children or their care. That could happen if we were married and both died. So we are better off co-habiting in that case.

It seems so wrong to me that people marry a rich man / woman, divorce two years later and get half their life's work, which then goes to their new family.

Good thing that that doesn't happen, really, isn't it?

On the current law, my view is that if you are committed to a person for the long term then the best thing to do is to get married regardless of whether one of you is a SAHP.

Even if you both take the view that you are going to work and not be dependent on each other, life isn't always that straightforward. Dependency isn't always chosen or predictable, life might throw it at you. You might be made redundant; be required to relocate for work and have to choose whose career to pursue; discover you have a debilitating illness that limits your ability to work; have to cease work for intensive treatment such as chemotherapy; have a child who becomes seriously ill and needs care; discover your child has special educational needs that require much or your time in appointments and education outside of school; experience mental health issues that prevent you from working fully; become a victim of domestic violence; need to care for elderly relatives.

All of those situations can make you vulnerable and can do so unpredictably (and these are all situations friends have been in) and many can also put significant strain on a relationship. Sadly most of us will experience some of the above at some point in our lives. In my view any long-term relationship will only work if it is a relationship where each commits to support each other whatever life throws at you. The great strength of marriage law is that it is largely based on that idea. It won't hold you to the commitment for life but if things go wrong it will (where financially possible) start from the assumption that you intended to be partners.

I think the thing that I would fear most is DP's family getting involved with the children or their care. That could happen if we were married and both died.

Being married or unmarried would make little difference, assuming your DP has parental responsibility and is named on their birth certificate. Either there are guardian appointed in your wills, which require social services approval for some decisions but are usually honoured, or there aren't, in which case social services take over but will talk to relatives at their discretion.

I can't help thinking you should seek legal advice, because you appear to have quite a few misconceptions.

I don't think there needs to be a big change in the law, the fact is that the mechanics are in place to protect people who want protection. If you have been cleaning up after somebody's mess for 30years and want some recognition in law for that, then the ready made recognition is there in the form of a marriage certificate.

If you live together for twenty years, but you have equal jobs, no kids, and you own 90% of the equity in the house, then you might not want to marry as it would disadvantage you to share assets 50/50. You would not want for there to be some middle ground where the fact that you have lived together gives the other party rights to your assets - if you wanted that, you'd get married!

Me and my DH were in this exact position, but the assets were mine not DH's. We moved in together 7 years ago into a house purchased with my money, and with only my name on the mortgage, he was essentially my tenant, although that wasn't the way I made him feel I'd like to think! After 2 years, I was changing the mortgage deal, and it was convenient at that point for me to add him on to the mortgage, so we did, and he had to be added to the deeds of the house. I still wanted to protect my £80k stake in the house, so we had a solicitor draw up a deed of trust confirming my rights to the first £80k should we split up, or if I should die, so my parents would get the assets not DP.

I very much wanted to get married, and we finally did this year. This means now that we own the property jointly, and if I die, it will pass to him, and vice versa. I love him and would hate to think of the house being sold from under his feet, so I'm glad that us marrying has confirmed those wishes, but had he not wanted to formalise the relationship, he would also not have benefitted from the financial security the arrangement has given him.

The interesting thing is that in our situation I had the financial control, but he had the emotional control. I didn't want to be the one to propose, and it was over 7 years before he proposed, so he chose when we got married basically. In most modern relationships the man has both the financial and the emotional control, leaving the woman wanting to get married because she loves him and because she doesn't want to be left in the cold financially if it all goes tits up. And a lot of those women are still waiting.

Friday - he does not have parental responsibility but is named on the birth certificate, DCs were born before the cut-off date. You are right I need legal advice, we both do.

There are misconceptions about marriage and about co-habiting and judging by the complexity and confusion on this thread I think the government should do something about it.

I do think that if marriage didn't exist, laws would have evolved to protect co-habiting couples (gay and straight) with children, without children, long-term and recently met. There must be recognition in all aspects of law - property, family and children, wills and estate, medical consent / next of kin.

It is all horribly disjointed at the moment.

I think one of the things preventing change is that there is rarely true evidence when one partner moves in with another - in Europe each resident has to register with the Council/town hall separately when they move.

I do think that if marriage didn't exist, laws would have evolved

And if wishes were horses we'd none of us walk.

There must be recognition in all aspects of law

There is. It's called "marriage". The anomaly of gays not being able to obtain the same protection has been fixed. The hand-wringing about brother and sister (etc) was mostly done in bad faith by people wanting to derail civil partnership; the main issue, which is children and post-relationship finances, won't (other than in edge cases that are going to end up in court anyway) arise in that case.

in Europe each resident has to register with the Council/town hall separately when they move.

And you think that's a good thing?

Civil partnerships for straight couples are desirable

They're a red herring. They've only existed for less than ten years and they only existed at all because Labour weren't willing to take on the church. In a sane world we would have passed the current Marriage Equality legislation in 2004 instead of the Civil Partnership fudge, and this discussion wouldn't be happening. Neither major party is going to revisit the legislation anyway.

Civil partnerships also create some spectacularly awkward anomalies. For example, one reason to marry is to satisfy visa and immigration regulations in other countries. A CP won't automatically do that, because those clauses are often drafted in terms of marriage, not anything else (indeed, I don't think the UK will recognise other countries' marriage-lites as marriage for immigration purposes, but I could be wrong). If someone dies overseas, and has a civil partnership in this country, what will the other country do? Who knows? And if civil partnerships are treated a marriages by other countries, does that mean that when you visit those countries the terrible things about marriage that you made such a fuss about that you demanded marriage-lite suddenly come into play?

What some people appear to want is marriage with the name changed, but in all other ways indistinguishable. I don't see why we should waste legislative time and effort on fussy eaters. And what other people want is marriage without the X, for some wide range of Xes that they can't agree on. That way lies madness.

"I favour some kind of education campaign, but even that is far from perfect."

I think that is very important. I think there are too many misconceptions - especially about common law man and wife etc which can leave co-habiting couples in dire straits when problems arise.

I think an advertising campaign of the form "you do know you can get married for fifty quid down the registry office, don't you? We don't even mind if you're wearing jeans" would help. All too often you see people complaining that they want to get married but can't afford it, and are saving for the big day and simultaneously complaining they can't afford the deposit on a house. The whole wedding industry "your perfect day" Bridezilla thing has created a group of people who need the protection of a quick register office signing, but don't think they can afford it.

One thing that would help would be social, rather than legislative, changes which allow people to get the protection of marriage when they need it, and then throw a big party when they can afford it. The only thing that really exists for that is "renewing our vows", and it probably makes me a bad person but when I see that happening I think "which of them has had an affair, or is it both of them?"

You just need one with 2 couples - 1 married, 1 unmarried and the same event happen to both of them. Then see how the law treats the unmarried couple.

Friday you are clearly biased in favour of marriage.

Having heterosexual civil partnerships would be much more fair. Perhaps someone could start a human rights equality/discrimination case against this.

I do think there is an argument for legal protection for those who haven't committed to each other in the marriage / CP way. Sometimes life just happens and people end up like this.

It does seem unfair that a couple can be together for many years, show commitment etc - but not through marriage - but have less rights than a couple who get married after a few weeks.

And the SAHM in the first situation can be left in a tricky situation despite everything she has done for the family and the relationship.