(Untitled)

[shreena]

I think the various proposals that seem to be floating around about co-habiting couples are just madness and it really frustrates me that the only people arguing against them are slightly loopy "must protect family life" campaigners.  When quizcustodet and I got married, our legal rights and obligations within that contract were explained to us by the

Comments

[ideealisme]

One word. Children. That's why they want to make the changes official.

[shreena]

I think child support already operates independently and, if not, it could do so without these changes.

[ideealisme]

Does child support cover maintaining the family home? Because if that is not provided for in the case of a cohabiting couple that might be the source of the call for legislation.

[robert_jones]

I agree entirely.

[karen2205]

All the proposals I've seen from the Law Commission include opt-outs, so people-living-together who don't want to be bound won't be. On that basis, I'm kind of reasonably happy with the proposals, they should protect people in a weak position and there are good ways I can make sure they never apply to me (unless I want them to, which I think is unlikely - if I want someone to have my property when I die, I'll make a will).

[shreena]

But why not make it opt-in?

If what we already have isn't sufficient, we could have an even simpler way of registering that you want to have these obligations and rights with respect to someone. Why make people opt out?

And, on a practical level, who would have to opt-out? Housemates who share finances? Housemates who don't share finances but have sex occasionally? The whole thing seems like it could be totally chaotic. And assumes that the state knows what cohabiting couples want more than the couples themselves do.

[karen2205]

Because if it wasn't opt-in, it wouldn't protect those who fail to think/don't have the education to know better/are generally vulnerable. Theoretically, I would agree a better solution would be proper education that living together does not lead to gaining rights over someone's property, but in the real world people are stupid/careless/not well educated/vulnerable and do things like giving up their own property in the mistaken belief that they will gain rights over their partner's property should the relationship end/one of them die. At the moment we have a mismash of case law about resulting and construstive trusts where the courts have taken the view that someone who has say paid their co-habitant's mortgage for 10 years, should be entitled to a share in the value of the property. I do think a decision to pay someone else's mortgage in the expectation you'd get some rights over their property without checking the position with a solicitor/accountant is very unwise (I'd never have done it, even before I'd taken a law degree), but

[ailbhe]

I seem to recall that someone I knew in Australia ended up common-law married by accident and had all sorts of legal ties to their partner which they'd wanted to explicitly avoid by not being married.

They do need to improve the provisions for children and the parent caring for children, family home etc, but de facto marrying people off unbeknownst to themselves isn't it.

[friend_of_tofu]

I agree with you very strongly about this - legal relationships should not be implied without the consent of the parties to the contract.

However, I think there's a genuine feminist issue there - women are overwhelmingly the losers in non-amicable break-ups of cohabitation arrangements, especially if there are children involved, and it's common for women to find themselves lacking house or pension after a 20-year relationship if they've been the primary carer/s. Women are substantially more likely to reach retirement age with minimal or non-existent pensions, and many have not paid enough NI to get a full state pension, which is why there are increasing numbers of older women having to work on.

I wrestle with ways to deal with this obvious imbalance. One could just shrug and say, "It's the patriarchy, stupid", but I don't think it's an intractable problem. How to resolve it without implying possibly unwanted legal relationships, though? Hm.

[shreena]

I think that it's only superficially feminist to support this kind of legislation because it seems to me that it basically boils down to "women make stupid decisions, let's protect them from the consequences of those decisions." Now, I don't think that women make those stupid decisions in a vacuum, I think they make them in the context of a society that encourages women to go for careers that are fulfilling rather than well paid, that encourages women to stay at home with children rather than men, that encourages women to value "niceness" over standing up for what they want

[friend_of_tofu]

I think that it's only superficially feminist to support this kind of legislation because it seems to me that it basically boils down to "women make stupid decisions, let's protect them from the consequences of those decisions."*nods like a nodding dog