UNMARRIED -NO RIGHTS!!!

[Oncewasneedy]

Just wondering what MN readers would think about a campaign for the rights of unmarried women/mums!! (Long one-sorry)
I am so tired of hearing about women on here getting the crap end of the stick purely because they weren't married! And also because they don't understand that being unmarried leaves you with no rights over anything!
I was one of those women!
I met my partner when I was 16 and he was 30. It was all good for a long time and when he proposed to me I didn't even look back! The very next day he said he wanted a long engagement! I was not happy about this!! But when I also began to have my own thoughts about things he didn't like it!
However in the time we were together we had 4 children! I would have had more as he wanted but his behaviour got more unforgivable with each birth! (Think narcissistic and your there)
We also went through many problems with losing parents to our family business going to pot! We fought hard to get our livelihood back and thank god we did it!
But despite everything it wasn't enough! I could go on and on about how selfish he was and how I thought I would die of sadness and loneliness being with him but it doesn't serve anyone! I begged him to try but in the end I couldn't take anymore and I left!
After 20 years together I had to leave!
I had to leave the home I had raised my children in, where they took their first steps, where I bathed them and had their birthday parties and Christmas!
I had to leave because I had no rights to the home- all in his name!
After 20 years- I meant no more to him than hired help!
Thank god I took a part time job when the youngest started school otherwise I would have been clueless!
Clearly this is a rant and a half but do other married women think that unmarried women should get legal protection in some form! I know that some women will flame me for being so naive and an idiot but when you meet someone at the age of 16 it twists your mind somewhat!
Im still trying to get my head around it all! So I'm sorry if I still sound angry!!!

How many times do we need to be told about the protection marriage gives you Get married or lose the protection. No one can stop you making daft decisions, getting pregnant, giving up your job etc. Being reliant on a man. That is YOUR choice.

The thing about couples who aren't married is very complex.

Your 'partner' could be someone you met last night or someone you have been with 20 plus years. Who will judge? What if you split up, didn't actually live together but have a child? There are so many scenarios.

I don't think the law should be changed.

If you want rights, get married.

I have sympathy for you OP but personally would never ever have a child with someone I wasn't married to.

If women want some protection they need to get married. I know most couples live together now but if after a certain amount of years I wasn't married I would be pretty worried.

I'm very sorry, but marriage is a legal contract in so many ways. I find it really hard to believe that most women in this day and age in the west don't know this. Men certainly do. Even young men. Are we saying only half of the population pays attention growing up?

Mookatron
The state doesn't consider you married for benefits. Benefits are given by the household.
No requirement to be married. No treating you like you are married.
It's why when I had an adult relative live with me for a bit I lost my single person council tax rate. It wasn't that I was being treated as married to him. It's just the household changed.

It isn't going all 'cat's bum mouth' to think the solution is to educate people instead of changing the law.
People who meet later in life can protect assets for their children by cohabiting and not marrying. Why should they not be able to cohabit because someone else is annoyed they spent 25 years and 7 children waiting for a proposal & now the relationship is over?

People make a decision when they move in together or start a family. If they want legal protection, they marry or sort it out in other ways. If they don't, they don't.
This ^^

I think there is a real ignorance around what marriage gives you. The fact people (male and female) think it’s a piece of paper indicates that ignorance.

I have met a few people who think unmarried people have rights and don’t believe me when I tell them otherwise, including the 80 year old matriarch who has 5 kids with 3 different partners/ husband- so you would think she would have some idea.

Some People just don’t know until it’s too late.

@Clairetree1 - I agree with you totally. There are lots of women in minimum wage jobs or little etsy-type "hobby jobs" who marry high-flying men who work long hours. They see these men as a way out of drudgery, and enjoy having a luxury life. Why should the man continue to provide a luxury life for these women? They haven't sacrificed a career to raise children, as they had no intention of having a career in the first place! At least today, hard working people of either gender can choose to live with someone and not be tied into supporting a cock/vadge lodger for the rest of their days. Of course they should support any children, but why on earth would one adult expect to be supported by another adult when the relationship is over??
Women aren't stupid little children who need to be protected. If someone of either gender chooses to pack in their career when not married, then I would assume that they made the choice with their eyes open - especially in today's internet-savvy world where you can find out legal information so easily. As a woman myself, it annoys me that so many women like to act the victim - woman up and wise up.

I lived with my now DH over 30 years ago. But as soon as the subject of starting a family came up we got married.
There are so many ways of putting a contract of some sort in place, but you have to actually do it.

Excellent and very apt user name harsh

harshbuttrue1980
Plus as another poster said (and I hadn't thought of this), men seem to be very aware that marriage is a contract. How many threads do we see where It's 'man with assets meets single mother of 2 with no assets, cohabit but he doesn't want to marry as It's just a piece of paper'? He knows exactly what marriage would mean if it were to end.

Are we saying that somehow 50% of the population missed the memo about marriage protection?

Rather than the law being changed l think it is PARENTS responsibility to educate their daughters (and sons)on sensible behavior, ie

NOTHING is more important than contraception!! Double up, every time.

Get yourself financially sound before having Dcs, and stay that way after.
Choose very, very carefully who you have children with, and insist on marriage first, move on if he dooesn't think you are worth marrying!

Our actions have consequences

Basic things that need to be taught to our children, particularly girls.

hard working people of either gender sex

A change in th law to protect women's in the way you want makes a mockery of feminism and equality.

In my position, as a woman, it would have been me that was screwed if the man I had children with had automatic rights to the house that I owned before we met. I chose not to marry him for a reason, I have every right to protect myself financially by not getting married, and I don't see why that right should be taken away just because some women choose to give up their jobs and have multiple children without contributing financially to them.

Woman are quick to complain that the man does nothing to look after their children when they do all the housework and childcare but they seem to forget very easily that their partner is the one paying not only for the entire costs of bringing up the children but for the entire costs of supporting another adult as well. No, the law doesn't need to be changed to protect people that are fully supported along with their children for years, they really aren't on to that bad a deal.

But is it automatically? Well I don't think a behaviour has to be deliberate to be abusive. And I think that a man who splits with his unmarried partner who has supported his career by taking on the majority of home responsibilities, and says you're on your own now, is being abusive.

This is a problem that overwhelmingly affects women and I truly believe that is why it is allowed to carry on happening, because it doesn't affect men (mostly).

He treated you very badly, you're right to be angry with him. A 30 year old being interested in a 16 year old is a red flag in my book and I wish someone had stepped in to help you wait for a partner who saw you as an equal.
The problem is, what you're asking is for the state to step in and impose legal responsibilities on a couple who have chosen not to opt into them voluntarily through marriage. If a couple wants to cohabit without having the obligation to divide assets, split pensions etc, shouldn't they be free to do so?
I agree there are situations like yours where one partner (most often the man) takes advantage of a financially weaker partner. I sometimes think marriage should be split into a legal institution and called something else (lifelong partnership agreement or something) and leave the wedding stuff to be a separate thing. Because really it's a legal agreement that protects you if the marriage goes wrong, one of you dies or gets sick. You can leave all the frills and cost of a wedding out of it.

There are shocking levels of ignorance about rights (lack of) in so called common law marriage.

Only recently on another forum I read of someone horrified to learn that if her long term partner died without making a will (neither of them had) she would be legally entitled to nothing from his estate.

Another thing people are so often unaware of is next of kin matters. However long and happily you've been together, if your partner was seriously ill and unable to speak for themselves, you would have no legal right to speak for them.

Another thing - I've known of more than one case where one partner would have liked to get married, but the other was always insistent that it was 'just a piece of paper' and didn't matter.
Only for that partner, after several or many years, to suddenly take off with someone else - and marry them very soon afterwards. And the remaining dp is left to belatedly realise that all that stuff about 'just a piece of paper' was really because deep down, that person did not want to make the commitment.

I know there are plenty who are happy without the piece of paper, but I suspect that the above scenario is not all that uncommon.

It's difficult, because when you treat unmarried couples in the same way as married couples after a certain period of time, you're giving rights yes. But you're also taking them away. And people don't always recognise that.

There are couples who want to live together and not get married quite deliberately, because they don't want the legal and financial implications of marriage. If we say tough shit, you're having them after a certain period of time, we're basically saying that some people shouldn't have the right to organise their lives in the way they want to, because other people can't or won't make provision for themselves.

So if we're going to go for that particular nuclear option, I'd want to make sure we'd tried everything else first before basically throwing some people under a bus because of others.

And it's a tough subject because the ignorance is just mind blowing. Even in discussions on here, not only are there people pretty much every time who have no idea about the legal situation, there are also people who have been fully appraised of it many times over a number of years who will still argue against it. It's not just people not knowing, it's also people not wanting to hear it. I think because it can feel like a judgement on one's own relationship. When of course it's not.

Nails, out of curiosity did you pay a nanny to care for your children?

Not many men do.

A woman who stays at home and puts in the time and effort to care for the children, take care of the household eg cooks, cleans does the household admin etc is saving the WOH a lot of money, time and mental and physical energy.

All those posters hung up on the legality of marriage and it being a contract, what are your views on common intention constructive trusts with regards to property and extending these principles to cover all assets built up over a relationship. For anyone unfamiliar with this concept here is a simple explanation of the kind of scenario where A (the woman in most cases) could claim a right to some of B's (usually the man's) assets:

A and another person (B) share a common intention that B should have a beneficial interest in an asset, and B has acted to his detriment on the basis of that intention

So to put it plainly if a woman can prove that she has detrimented her own position through becoming a SAHP, working PT or doing the bulk of the childcare etc based on the assurance of her partner that he would marry her or share his assets with her then she should be entitled to some of the assets even if they didn't actually end up getting married. I think that this would be a great starting point for making the law more equitable and protecting women who act in good faith based on the assurances provided by their partners.

MaisyPops I'm talking about unemployment benefits and child benefit, which you can get if you're house sharing but not if you're in a relationship (they will check sleeping arrangements if necessary). It is assumed the finances are joint in that case... as if you were married.

I don't necessarily think the law should be changed. But we could put a monetary /legal value on childcare performed as a state. We just don't.

OP, I agree that this is a huge issue for women and I'm really sorry that you went through this. I could have been in a very similar situation but did (eventually) get the house put in both our names, with a will in place too.

There's apparently another issue which hardly anyone talks about: having the insurance put into a trust. (Disclaimer: I don't know much about this and am certainly no expert.) Apparently, if the main wage earner dies, even if they're insured, the estate gets tied up in probate which can leave the remaining partner unable to pay the mortgage. I believe that getting the insurance put into a trust can resolve this. (Hopefully, someone who knows about this will explain more.)

As for changing the law re LT, we have marriage laws already. The thing that's missing, in my mind, is education. We need to be teaching our young women how to protect themselves.

I think there needs to be some serious education regarding this as I've met so many people convinced that the UK has common law marriage.
Why, oh why don't they teach this in schools?

I think there should be some rights for unmarried women. The ops position is unfair and not uncommon. Young girls are sold a fairy story in romcoms and magazines and fall in love, they don't fully think through the circumstances. They think it's unromantic and makes them a gold digger. Even older women want to feel independent and say 'it's just a piece of paper'. If it works in other countries especially Scotland, why not here?

I told my dh after a few years that if we didn't get married I was leaving. I wasn't going to expose myself having children when not yet married as I knew I would take at least maternity leave and maybe be a sahm. So less pension contributions, salary and promotions. I was sacrificing my earning power. I also wanted to make sure we were each other's next of kin in case of illness. But I was lucky that I had the knowledge, parental advice and self esteem to do that. Not everyone does and there should be better protections for them.

I don't think civil partnerships would help as those wishing to avoid financial commitment can just as easily say they won't have a civil partnership as a marriage or string their partner along.

Better education of the legal side of things at school would also help.

Agree with PP. If you need the protection, get married.

If your partner doesn't want to marry you and you need that protection then they aren't right for you are they?

I think it's a positive idea bumpity but given the potential costs involved of establishing such a trust when it's disputed, it's not necessarily going to be helpful in cases where the pot of assets is quite modest. So it could potentially assist some but with others, the cost of going to law is going to be prohibitive.