common law wife

[sueonline]

I would just like to highlight that there is no such thing as a common law wife. If you are not married to your partner and he has kept everything in his name, you have no rights to anything. We still use this term, but many people do not know that there is no legal status, what is his is his and what is yours is yours. The law is different in scotland and they have recognised that some couples do not marry, have children,and need some sort of legal security, but in engalnd they have still not recognised couples that love together as partners.Many women with children like myself can end up in a difficult position once they split from their long term partners.

Absolutely.
We are doing our will's this week.
I did not know that if I died, dp would not automatically get custody of our children

Agree totally that there is no such thing as common-law-wife.
There is good reason for this, though: for the state to deem a couple to be married without actually being married would mean that the government would have carte blanche to interfere into the private lives of adults who wish to live together free of legal ties.

This is NOT to say that marriage is better than cohabitation it's just that in order to have a free decent society people have to be able to have relationships and leave them without consequence. Otherwise, we would have the bedroom police knocking on our doors.

Sorry that you are in this situation, but every action has a consequence.
I AM married and am desperate to get out of it but the legalities are proving tricky believe me, I wish I had just been cohabiting. C'est La Vie.