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

I agree with you MeanBean, it's profoundly depressing to think that the status of childrearing would improve if only it were men's work. In fact, wasn't there talk recently of the nursery industry paying more in order to attract more men? The cheek. I tend to think fine, give gay couples the same rights as married hetero couples if they want to agree formally to the committment. Otherise yes, hetero couples have the option to marry. I do think there should be some difference between being married and not being married though. I would have hated some of the scumbags I've lived with in my life to have been entitled to half of my assets just because I lived with them for a while even if I didn't marry them. I agree with aloha's point and I don't think highly of those men who don't want to marry because they feel they may lose out in some financial way were they to divorce despite the fact that their female partners have given up their jobs to bring up children. I do think it's very unfair in the case of women staying at home with children and would almost say don't be an unmarried sahm actually.

senorapostrophe there was a piece in The Herald on Monday (Glasgow based paper) about this and it was indeed about new rights for cohabiting heterosexual couples in an article about sweeping changes to Scottish family law, so perhaps it is only going to apply in Scotland - another example of our wonderful new parliament which I happen to think is an expensive joke but thats another topic .

Message withdrawn

I seem to be in a minority here but I'm fed up with the attitude that says "I don't want to go along with an established practice because I don't agree with it but I demand the same rights as those who do", & that the Govt says "so many people are doing something else that we have to change the law to accomodate them".

I seem to be the only person who doesn't like the way our society is moving. I don't think it is necessarily progress either. When I got married in 1983 it still wasn't the done thing to live together & it felt like a really big deal to get married. Now it's almost like people get to a certain age & instead of having boyfriends like we did as teens, just move in with them (& I'm thinking of my DD here, not adult MNetters). It seems like we've lost an important rite of passage.

No doubt I will get shot down in flames over this but it does feel like having your cake & eating it.

Tallulah, I think the problem with living together (speaking as someone who has done it!) is not so much the having your cake and eating it, as that people tend to drift into it, and then drift on with it for years, assuming that the other person wants the same thing. Getting married forces decisions, and in general, that is a good thing in a relationship. It's not the only way of forcing decisions obviously, but it's the most widespread and effective one, by the look of it. The particular decision I'm thinking of is babies - I drifted into living with someone, drifted on for years, and it got to a stage where it was time to have a baby. Too late to find someone else, so I had a baby with someone I wasn't sure of, hence now being a single mother. A friend of mine split with her bloke (with whom she'd drifted for eight or nine years) and is now 38, desperate for children and kicking herself for having allowed a man to waste her fertility years. Forcing a commitment makes that scenario less likely. So I think you might have a point. Sorry for not shooting you down in flames!

I too think people move in too carelessly. I've done it myself though it worked out OK (didn't stay with the bloke but met my dh very quickly after moving out). I'll certainly suggest to my stepdaughter that she should get her own home and not live with anyone unless she would be prepared to marry them (not that she should marry them, but that she should think of it as the same level of commitment IMO). I too have friends who are the victims of 'living together drift' - and one whose bloke always said he'd never marry or have kids, and, as they do, left her for the woman he married within a year and went on to have a baby with. YOu can imagine how she felt.

Dont you think people also force the issue, get married and then get divorced x years later. Is it not more about the individuals than marraige or co-habiting. You are either committed to a good happy healthy loving and supportive relationship or you are not. I fail to see what marraige has to do with it.

Does anyone know the current divorce statistics v the long term relationship slit statistics???

Its an interesting debate but like so many things its individual but....
whilst im on the train of being argumentative i find it interesting that it seems in the most part to be the married couples who think the unmarried want 'their cake and eat it too' !!!!

Well if you think about it why wouldnt anyone want that and why are those with a problem with it so bothered by it. Is it not a case of feeling superior in the sense of 'Ive earnt it' cos thats how it sounds to me!!! Still smiling tho'

No, it's just that marriage isn't all benefits (hardly any in fact!) but it imposes responsibilities too. I think the some people do appear to be saying, well, I want all the rights of married couples (er, that will be the inheritance tax thing then) but none of the pesky responsibilities (paying maintenance, sharing property etc). I cannot see any gvmt offering that deal as a 'right'. It just isn't going to happen.

The rights and responsibilities thing will also apply to gay civil partnerships too, as far as I can see. I think anyone should live as they want, provided it doesn't harm anyone else.

Im not sure that i see that marraige imposes responsibilites .... i think that depends on the individuals, there are plenty of bastards and evil witches that do not care about responsibilities when the chips are down at the end of a marraige and i personally have seen quite a few women behave far worse than some men.

In so far as the paying maintenance and providing for partners and children etc as far as i am aware there are still plenty of laws to protect parties that have been co-habiting under common law.

I live very happily with my partner and have done for 7 years we have one child, one on the way and his two children. Although i am the breadwinner, the asset provider etc etc i am fully aware that if we split up i would have to provide maintenance for him (in order that he could also provide well for our children) however if i die he will not have the benefit of inheritance tax exemption. I therefore cannot provide in my will for him to have a home without forking out 40% of the value to the government and if our children are still young that would be their future provisions depleted. can you begin to see a different picture yet or am i still being hormonally and exhaustedly ineloquent. Or should i just give up tell me while i can still shrug and laugh!!!

The rights and responsibilities thing will also apply to gay civil partnerships too, as far as I can see. I think anyone should live as they want, provided it doesn't harm anyone else.

Actually Stace you are mistaken. There is absolutely no such thing as 'common law' and no such thing as 'common law relationships'. If you chuck your partner out you are under no obligation to share your property with him or pay him anything at all. You have absolutely no mutual obligations whatsoever, which is quite different to marriage (or to the proposed gay civil partnerships. If you want him out, he has no rights at all. There are no laws to protect him. Or you, if the situation was reversed. There is only an obligation to the children, via the CSA. The first £250,000 of your inheritance is tax free so unless you are planning to leave him more than that then the difference in inheritance tax won't hurt you, surely?

bloss I don't think your views on marriage are naive at all, I think they are lovely !I wish I still had them, I really do.
All I was saying was I felt a litle sad at hearing you express so eloquently how I felt when I was married (for 7 years)to the man I felt 100% certain was the right person for me. In no way was I suggesting that you are likely to be disappointed just because I was.
But lets say the awful happened and for whatever reasons it all went pear shaped. If you met someone else surely you would be unlikely to have the same view of marriage?

yes, the whole point is that without marriage there is no legal relationship between the living-together partners. The govt. can't just invent a legal relationship, how would it be tested/proven? Whilst I don't have any views on co-habitation in itself, once people have children, I'm amazed they don't get married, how can the C-word (commitment) be so difficult to make to each other once people have dependants? It's just so much easier legally if anything were to go wrong (like one of you dying).

Can't find the article on the Glasgow Herald website, but there's a brief mention of distribution of assets of co-habiting couples here

Can't get the link to work StuartC. Will the proposals apply to everyone or just to those with children? I lived for five years with my ex, and walked away with nothing, which I thought was absolutely fair. Mind you, I absolutely refused to pay anything towards the mortgage and running of the house as it wasn't my house as I knew my legal position perfectly well. I do think it would have been unfair for me to claim his property.

It is just a consultation document at present, so very much putting put questions - of course those here with strong views can always feed them into the process!

The condoc is available here . Aloha, it looks as if under the situation that you outline, the answer is nothing would change - it seems that they are more looking at the cases where children are involved and say one parent has given up work to look after the children.

NZ where I come from has a equal de facto law, since the early 90's or late 80's
proof of certain things is need (keep all receipts infact)
But it is very helpful, unless like me your shit and prat of an ex moves out 22 mths after moving in, before the 24 mth qualifier kicks in...I believe Scotland has a de facto recognition law too?

Cam,

maybe it is not totally logical, but DP and I have no problems with the C-word (commitment), nor the T-word (trust), but the M-word sends me screaming in the opposite direction. I've just seen too many marriages which I would consider very bad, and am hopelessly cynical about the difference between the ideal and the reality.

As for having children together, it's partly because I do trust DP totally to be an excellent committed father to the kids that I don't feel marriage is necessary for that. We have joint parental agreement, and if one of us died or went off with someone else, I still trust he'd be a great and very involved father. Because he's that sort of person (and I have to say I would not trust most women's ex-husbands to be good in that situation). To me, the commitment to your children is a very different thing to commitment to a relationship. Far more important, because they really are dependents and need their parents. I don't feel I need DP, nor he me, we are adults who choose to live together. But the kids do need us and that to our minds is the important commitment.

I think where children are involved maybe the law does need looking at again. But I do not think the state has a role in regulating the affairs of adults who have chosen to have an unregulated relationship, as I did. I knew I didn't want to marry my boyfriend but we enjoyed living together for a while. I certainly didn't think and still don't think that should have given me rights over his money and house. But of course, the rights still have to cut both ways - with responsibilities.

Message withdrawn

But how does the state know if you are living together in a relationship which you hope to be permanent, therefore expecting some division of assets if it broke down, or just living with someone and would be horrified if he got half your possessions if you split up? Surely that's the point of marriage, you are making it official and so attract legal obligations to each other. It would be desperately unfair if the state started imposing legal obligations on people who have chosen not to enter into a legally-binding relationship.
When my then-dp, now husband, and I (sounds like the Queen!) bought our first flat together, he put down the deposit. I had to sign an agreement that if we split up, he'd get that money back, which I was happy to do. I assume, since I had to sign the document, that without it I would have got half the flat even though he'd contributed £10,000 and I had no lump sum to put in. Which seems unfair.

I did understand that whether or not you are married, parenthood itself creates a legal obligation to support your children, paying maintenance for them if you split up for example. Does anyone think that doesn't happen?
I guess from postings here the problem is if one person gives up work to look after kids and then the relationship breaks down ? is there no obligation for the working partner to support the stay-at-home partner? That also seems unfair.

PS you don't have to make any promises about life-long fidelity or any of the other things people object to if you get married (unless I've forgotten something about the civil ceremony).

I totally agree Batters. It is totally up to you and what you want to do and feel most comfortable with. I also agree with Bloss that far too many women are not clued up as to their rights - or lack of them - in unmarried relationships and I think that's pretty awful.
On the inheritance tax thing if it is really a big deal to Stace (though I do believe & hope that issue is really very, very unlikely to be a reality for her for many decades to come) further down the line if she does want to leave assets worth more than £250K to her partner tax free she might consider marriage with a good prenup - they are becoming increasingly taken seriously by the courts. Also, if you have the kids and have built up the business etc, it is very unlikely that a court would order you to hand over 50% of assets or anything like it.