Cohabitation Rights - campaign from Rights of Women

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.rightsofwomen.org.uk/cohabitation-rights/

Campaign here from the organisation Rights of Women.

I'm wondering if there may be arguments against it, or any unintended consequences?

Anyway, info here, plus template letter should you wish to write to your MP.

'We want the Government to change the law, so women’s rights to justice and safety aren’t dependent on their marital status.
The Law Commission and Women’s and Equalities Commission have recommended introducing legal protections for separating cohabitational partners with children, and that cohabitational partners should have the right to inherit from each other.'

I don't think this would be insurmountable.

To take a position I don't particularly hold - here in Canada, or at least in my province, cohabiting is mainly defined by filing your taxes together as a household for two years running.

And I think you could make an argument that if you are going to file together, it does imply that your household is not functioning, economically, as two separate entities, but as one.

I think that's where some of the push for legislation comes from. The argument being that once the household is functioning as a unit it's increasingly difficult to distangle what belongs to whom, and who contributed, and who made sacrifices. So - that's the reality, whether people agree to that formally or not, and the argument is the law should recognize that.

Anyway - also where I live, while there are some rights cohabiting couples have, they aren't identical to people who are married either, so it is possible there could be some kind of middle road. OTOH when couples like this separate it is still often extremely difficult to divide assets and such.

A lot of the issues with cohabitation would be avoided if the CMS were fit for purpose.

If actually non resident parents had to pay a greater proportion of the living costs of the children they are responsible for creating, and there were real sanctions (both legal and societal) for failing to do so, the results of a relationship breakdown for unmarried couples would be far less brutal for the person left with primary care of the children.

Excellent summary.

I totally support a huge public education campaign on this but marriage is marriage and cohabitation is cohabitation. If DH were to die I would never marry again because bluntly I would have too much to lose.

In the UK we don't have joint taxation in that way.

It's always possible to draw a line somewhere, I agree with you on that. I think the issue a lot of us have with it is that it would evidently create another mechanism for abusers to exploit, that it would simply be swapping one group of abused women for another. And ROW are not addressing that.

I think this is a great point..our laws are still based on the fact that historically children born within a marriage are the responsibility of the father whereas for women having children out of wedlock, “ it could be anyone’s”. Luckily we now have DNA tests to contest disputed parentage. But I also agree that we need to educate our own children about the consequences of having kids with someone without any consideration of marriage/ civil partnership/ co- habitation agreement in place. Much more difficult when parents themselves are often not married and family breakdown is so common amongst unmarried parents.

Yes for once I think the Americans get it right on this issue as they seem much stricter.

Labour are talking about allowing bank snooping and driving license removal for benefit fraud. Why the fuck can they not do the same for absent fathers?

The rights are there to be had, they require a contract. This one is called marriage.

The problem with cohabiting is that it is without a contract (unless partners go through all the legal requirements to make each safe in the relationship - btw it's easier to get married). Since there is no contract nothing can be proved. And how long cohabiting? A year? Ten years? Fifty? It's impossible to determine who would get such rights, so no, I don't support this initiative.

I agree, but giving all women (and all men) these rights won't solve that issue.

We have such an agreement: it's called marriage or a civil partnership (which is marriage-lite).

I would never support forced marriage - or indeed people being forced by the government into the rights and responsibilities of de facto marriage, which is pretty much the same thing.

It would be a gross over-reach of a dictatorial state to assign marriage to people whom it somehow believed 'should be married', against their clear will (as demonstrated by their not having married).

By all means educate people who somehow believe that you can become married without ever actively getting married - similar to automatically becoming an official adult after you've lived for 18 years - but it really must remain an active choice, both for people who do want to get married and people who don't want to get married.

Yes, this is what I don't get.

"Oh, we need some kind of mechanism for people who are living together as a family to have rights and such protected:."

That is literally what getting married is for.

Yes, and this is entirely down to fact we do NOT EDUCATE Teens, especially teen girls who come out worst form this most often, that marriage isn’t about a massive expensive instagram day, nor is it solely about being “in love” and romantic notions. It is a legal and financial argreement. If you are going to have kids as a women you’re either very wealthy or a complete idiot (or uneducated) to do that without the security a simple marriage license affords you.

god only knows, the LGB community realised this years ago when it began the fight for civil partnerships/marriage. They’d seen partners being turfed out of their home or shut out of a funeral, but families who had more legal rights than they did after death of their partner. Some tragic cases of partners beibg togther 30,40 years. They were fed up with HMRC not allowing them the same inheritance flexibility and selling their home to pay IHT

so this is about education, in schools, along with other financial and legal education. So many men ,and women, are put off marriage by myths of what happens in divorce and whilst that’s not great, educating people about the law on fair settlement would help dispel those myths.

m finenwith couples remaining in partnership if they have no children. Sure they’ll miss out on tax advantages, they need good wills and LPOA to ensure they have legal rights, but rock on. Frankly it’s a good first step before all the wills and LPOA to get a single legal certificate to utilising exisiting laws that will bestow those right to you in those complex documents at one simple signature- it’s called a marriage certificate. But hey ho, people still want to disregard that’s what marriage is. A legal and financial agreement. The rest is the pretty words you say on the day in front of other people.

im divorced by the way. After 30 years of marriage. So have skin in the game of whether marriage is worth it. Yes, if you have kids. Yes if you want rights.

educate.
and stop all this crap with mega expensive weddings.
just head to registry office and get it done. Simple

Ahhh, Canada ….so my parent was in a partnership with a Canadian for 20 years before my parents death. They got a right to remain/Canadian citizenship off back of “common law” immigration rules on Canada.

they could have married. The partner didn’t want to. Told my parent not ne3ded as they were seen as common law spouses. Yet they immersed their financial affairs so completely without any real legal documents or agreements. because Canadian partner said to parent it was all fine due to these fantastic candian rights. Should say that partner did ok form this while alive. As did partner.

Parent (not partner) returned to uk, and their house theyd kept, permenantly when they became ill . 5 years later died. Their Will was a mess, becuase everything was written as if partner was legal spouse under uk law, yet written within uk law terminology by uk solicitor where common law isn’t recognised. And if that wasn’t a mess enough at the time, some years down line partner is now also loosing mental competency in Canada. Parent assumed that their children (including me) would run around looking after their partner in partners old age and infirmity after they’d had died becuase by then they’d be playing happy common law spouses in England. Eg partner would have already moved to uk and living in parents house as their joint home. So We have a near unworkable situation with a house we can’t sell due to a will trust, that is standing unoccupied in uk. Still with furniture and possssion in it we can’t clear as they’re trustee. They have own next of kin relatives looking after her. We have no bloody idea what is happening, and are forced, years after parents death , to still be maintaining contact with her and her family to keep some semblance of logistics of running this house. I don’t even really know the partner as they lived with parent in Canada and only visited here as much as they were allowed to without being taxed in uk. In the end their common law arrangement was all driven by that financial advantage - partner didn’t want to pay tax in uk…they was better off in Canada, and remaining single in Canada .

common law rights in Canada swayed my parent into thinking “it’ll all be ok”. It bloody isn’t. It’s a legal and practical mess. It could go on for another 15 years till we are all too old to be able to do what we do now.

I don't think everything Canada does is great, but I don'tthink Canadian law is at fault here. It sounds like your parent should have taken some initiative to discover what the law actually said before making major planning decisions.

The law is there, it defines these things, you can go to a lawyer and get advise on your situation. In complex cases like this it's a wise thing to do - even with a marriage where the outcomes can be very complicated in situations where there are children from previous relationships, property, international citizens, and trusts.

@LeavesOnTrees Also you can leave your inheritance to anyone you want if you make a will

Not the for Scotland as we ywve right of succession here.

Well, plenty do seem to be that 'stupid' or maybe naive would be a better word. You see it on here all the time.

Same way as the benefits people do?
If cohabiting is recognised for losing benefits, should it also be recognised for gaining rights?

My guess is ROW are talking just about England and Wales here. The briefing from a couple of years ago that I linked to upthread said that specifically. As others have said, law in Scotland differs.

I think unintended consequences would be just as dangerous and damaging for women.
I think WRN should design a simple, comprehensive leaflet/ poster to be displayed in schools, work places, public buildings, antenatal clinics, gp surgeries. A leaflet should be given out in every smear clinic, every antenatal and postnatal check.
There needs to be a similar campaign about wills and estate planning.
This information needs to go on all social media and soaps.
A story line on Corrie might be a start.

Sorry. Rights of women, not WRN.

It does already, in some circumstances. Some unmarried partners can make a claim under the intestacy rules, for example. And we have TOLATA.

But it's different with benefits because, although I agree the disparities in rules can lead to confusion, benefits are the state deciding what to do with the state's money. It doesn't involve any individuals losing rights. Whereas imposing the marriage contract provisions on people who haven't actively chosen it does. Marriage is too often framed as just about gaining rights, and it's not. It also means giving up some rights that an unmarried cohabitant would have too.

This.

The unmarried cohabitation obviously exists and it is recognised for other purposes. Two parents living together with their children is a situation which is by definition entangled and should be addressed when splitting (thought not necessarily on par with marriage)

Absolutely. It's like saying "I disagree with passports on principle, so I haven't applied for one - but I really think the government should bring in some kind of system whereby people like me can legally travel abroad".

Sorry, don't agree with this.
Marriage or CP is the opt in to acquiring those rights. Otherwise you would need some sort of opt out - what would stop a lodger claiming that you were in a relationship?
It is one of the reasons why I refuse to ever marry again.
The unintended consequences of this are huge.

Virtually all of the time, whether you are married or not is absolutely clear-cut. (Exceptions with marriages that ought never to have been allowed in the first place, e.g. bigamy.)

It's not the same with cohabitation. You'd need a whole lot of rules as to what counts and even then there'd be enough grey area that a lot would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Great for the family law firms, perhaps; not so much for the actual people involved.