New laws/rights for cohabiting couples

[jasper]

Heard a bit about this in the news yesterday but was not listening properly. Anyone got any info or a link? Thanks

Meanbean - Swedish feminists argue for a 6 hour working day as standard, to allow more time for both fathers and mothers to be childcaring. They also argue for extended paid leaves for men and women. And for very cheap, or free, high quality childcare.

Encouraging fathers to do more childcaring is one good way of raising its value. When childcare is not a women's thing, it is likely to be seen as more important.

Harman, good luck with the counselling. Yes you could suggest some agreement with financial security and see what he thinks of that.

Good old Swedish feminists!

Agree that getting men to do stuff makes it more valuable, but don't you find that just a little bit depressing? That the only reason it's valuable is because men do it?

yes it's depressing but I didn't mean to imply it will only be valuable if men do it. Just that that would raise its economic and societal status, and then working hours, pensions, tax systems etc would be more likely to include childcaring as important. And then women would be less vulnerable in pensions and inheritance tax terms, whether married or not.

Sorry Fennel - do you mean that you want to be totally independent from dp on everything? What about your house?

With property values round here I could get caught out severely if dh died and I didn't get an IHT break. His share of the house would swallow the IHT allowance and I would have to pay 40% tax on everything else - his half of our current account, savings accounts, furniture, car.. And I must say that as we have had children very much as a joint decision, with the aspiration of both providing for them (though in different ways), I would want to know that I could get paid his life assurance etc without a 40% tax hit.

I know that there are people who have decided to have children alone, but I would have expected those to be still in the minority. And do plan to do it all financially independently is immense.

But hey, I guess if dh dies when you rule the country, the state will get most of dh's assets and will then provide for me and my family as it sees fit. Thank goodness they are so reliable at that

I have to admit I am not very clued up on inheritance tax and what you get if you are married or cohabiting. But I don't see that it's necessarily wanting things both ways (all the rights of marriage without the responsibilities) to want to share property with someone else and then not be taxed on it as if you had bought it independently.

and it is a shame to get married just for such reasons. it may be necessary, maybe we will do it aged 59, but surely that's not really a good reason to get married?

Well, Fennel, Stace said that she didn't want to share her house with her dp if they split, but she wanted to have inheritance tax rights (which seems a bit contradictory when I write it down, actually). The point about marriage is that it includes an element of caring for each other which reduces the state's responsibilitis - ie partners have to pay maintenance to each other and take care of each other's housing needs if they split, so in return the state offers certain privileges - ie you can inherit a bit more tax free when your spouse dies (your partner's share of house and other assets have to be worth more than £250,000 for this to apply to you).

Yes Aloha that sounds fair enough put like that. But don't cohabiting partners also have the same maintenance duties to their partners already (ie if one of us is unemployed they are presumed to be financially dependent on the other partner's income or savings)?

actually I don't mind the state getting any of my assets over 250K. I think there are needier causes out there than DP.

Agree with Fennel and Nula totally.
Marriage (and the proposed gay registration) is a package of many contracts.
I'm not tempted to take that package again.
First dw told me (a couple of years after wedding - no kids) "I want to finish working now - you're my husband, it's your duty to keep me". I'd not enter such a "contract" as that again.
DP is wonderful and love her dearly - but if something goes wrong (infidelity of one of us, violence of one of us, etc,etc) I don't want to give away half of the assets I've gained through 38 years of hard work (including what I managed to retain after two divorces).
(Agree also about inheritance tax - why should anyone inherit millions - but that's probably another thread.)

Also pensions - if I married DP and the relationship failed after two years I'd have to give her half on the pension gained through all those years of work (that's in England - under Scottish law only the pension gained through the married years is to be shared).

The only thing that tempts me to marriage is that my occupational pension scheme does not pay "partners pension" following the death of a member. DP is independent financially and would not suffer greatly, but why should the scheme gain - I pay the same contribution as a married person for less benefit (again - another thread).

Yes, that's my thing about pensions, StuartC. I pay the same as if I were married, so why should the scheme be different? Again, it's not wanting it both ways. They could give all people, married or single, a choice of paying more and including a Named Significant Other, or paying less for a Solo pension.

My DP is also wonderful! am very happy with him. but I don't want his money if he walks out.

Fennel, well, yes, if you are together, but if you split you have no duty to look after each other, only the kids, which isn't true of divorced couples. Re inheritance tax, the government gets the tax out of all of us in the end pretty much, as when the surviving spouse dies the estate is taxed. It's just sort of deferred if you are married. It was invented so that elderly (or, indeed, not so elderly) widows weren't forced out of their family home due to the death of their husband, which did happen. One of the triggers for the gay marriage stuff is Nigel Hawthorne's parther of over 30 years, who had to leave their home and lovingly cultivated garden because of a very large inheritance tax bill. Sad, and I do sympathise, but I have to say my heart doesn't bleed too profusely as he wasn't left badly off by any means.

Do you know why anyone should inherit millions. simply because if someone worked bloody hard enough to earn it they should IMO be entitled to leave it to whom they like.

There are people on this thread that appear IMO to be only seeing things from their own perspective. ......

Like Stuart C (we wish!!!) Worked very hard for 20-30 years building up a secure life for self. Met partner. Fell in love. Spent lots of money getting dp out of nasty vicious divorce. supported dp and his kids for years financially and now have kids of own. Love each other deeply but still have a very strong sense that my birth children have more rights to my millions than my partner and his children who have their own two parents to provide for them.

Equally feel that my dp should be entitled to whatever i leave for him tax free as if we were marraiged. We are just as committed as any marraiged couple i know and in many cases more so.

Again if anything were to happen to dp he could not pass it to me without tax liabilities and palleeeeeese dont start advising me about wills and trusts unless you really know what your talking about. !!!!!

Anyway im gonna keep smiling and who knows might even get married one day

Message withdrawn

I think if you have children together it is a good idea with a little bit of long-term financial and legal commitment (as well emotional of course, but IMO you don't need a contract for that). It is typically the woman who either give up her career or join the "mummy-track" for a while and this means her earning prospects (often throughout her career) as well as pension suffers. It is often also the mother who stays with the children if there is a breakup of a relationship. Eventhough the father provides money for the children, it does again affect her career/earnings to be a single mother. I agree that if Fennel got society the way she wanted, then it would be totally different, but that is Utopia (although Sweden is a great deal nearer to that Utopia that than the UK!) To me it is really important to know that I am provided for if my DH dies. I do want his money. As I earn quite a lot myself, the same goes for my DH. I don't see this as insulting to women at all. I see it as looking after and caring for eaachother. I think it's a great thing that they finally sort out the gay rights, although I can't see a reason why they shouldn't have exactly the same type of marriage as heterosexual couples. I also think people who choose not to marry should have the same legal rights as if they were married. Some kind of "partnership" which they have in the Nordic countries.

Fennel, you have my vote What you have posted this morning beautifully summarises what I have spent the last 7 years (since I realised that I will never get married) trying to express!

Bloss, your post is great. It's how I feel about marriage too

So Stace, do you think there should be no tax on unearned income?

Aloha my point is not that i shouldnt pay my taxes

i also for the record do not object to paying higher rate tax

but it does get silly sometimes and a person begins to question why they bother to work so hard for their family when the tax man will take anything and everything he can get his hands on. Personally i wouldnt mind so much if the country was in a better state for all concerned.

Anyhow as i said i object to having my hard earned estate being taxed at 40% (less threshold) just because i choose not to marry.

But stace, you say you want to leave most of your property to your kids, and that would be taxed anyway, married or unmarried. Just as it would be if a married person left most of their money to their kids. Unless you want to leave more than £250K to your partner it won't make much difference to what you leave to him, will it?
For the record, I do not think my relationship is superior to anyone else's because I wanted to get married. I know lots of wonderful people who aren't married and are every bit as happy and committed as I am to my dh.

firstly i did not say that you or any person who is married thinks they are superior anywhere!!

Have you ever thought about people who have assets income producing and otherwise. Are you aware that the current laws in many instances will take 40% of value whether there is liquid capital or otherwise. There are many cases were buisinesses have had to sell under forced situations exceptionally cheaply merely to provide the 40% value payment to the inland revenue. In otherwords businesses and families futures and livilihoods can get depleted purely to pay these taxes. There are many ways round it , trusts, off shore companies, insurances etc but at the end of the day surely it would be better to keep the wealth were it can continue to be taxed to bring in ongoing income instead of forcing people to utilize loop holes!!!!

do you really think that 40% of a persons wealth should be taken when they die regardless of their wishes.

Aloha and 150 percent, I think you may have misread me or more probably I did not express myself well.

I am more than well aware that there is no such thing as "common law" ! THAT'S why I want to stay unmarried!
But unless I am mistaken, the new laws for cohabiting couples may mean that, effectively, common law( as we have up till now MISunderstood it) WILL come to exist.

I am all for sharing of everything with dp, SO LONG AS WE ARE TOGETHER as a family unit.

BUT if the relationship breaks down, (remember I'm divorced, this is very real to me) I don't want him to have the kind of claim on my house or what ever that the new laws might give him.

I am also well aware that marriage does not automatically mean your assets are divided 50:50.
Believe me I have looked into this a lot more than most. I know exactly what our rights are if we stay together or split under current laws and have arranged our circumstances accordingly (ie not got married).

If the new laws mean that by cohabiting he will get property and pension rights if we split I will seriously consider a preemptive split before the laws come into force.

I love him but I am very realistic about our chances of being together forever.

Bloss your post about marriage made me a little sad. Your views are identical to the ones I held when I was married. As I said already, I am now divorced and that was NEVER on my agenda. Believing marriage is for life is scant protection against it all coming tumbling down. I sincerely wish you well in preserving the integrity of your views.

Stace, what difference does it make to the person who has died that their wealth is taxed? the point is that it is income to those who inherit the wealth and is therefore taxed.

As far as I am aware, the inland revenue shares your views on having an existing business which will continue to produce taxable income rather than force a business to close in order to get the inheritance tax in one go and is therefore open to negotiation on payment terms. I may well be wrong there, but it is what I understand to be the case.

Sorry Nula, esp as actually I agree with you. I do think that splitting property should only happen if couples mutually decide to sign up for it via marriage or otherwise - even though injustices do happen - there is a sad post on special needs from the mother of a boy with autism whose partner threw her and the boy out of his house (their home) and she had no rights. Stace, I wasn't getting at you when I posted that, I just thought I might have sounded as if I was moralising when I'm honestly not - I don't think married people are remotely better than unmarried people. But I still don't think a marriage or a civil partnership would help you preserve your assets untaxed if you choose to pass them to your children. We are all in the same boat there. I have little knowledge about tax planning for companies I'm afraid, and we're so skint inheritance tax holds no fears for me, sadly

Nula - as I understood it, they have no intention of changing the law for co-habiting couples, hence the hoo ha (there've been lots of unmarried couples on the news moaning that gay couples can declare their partnership and get these rights, but unmarried heterosexual couples can't).

It's what made us decide to get married.