The Wait Continues...
Improved legal rights for cohabiting couples are still bleak, despite the recent, and much publicised, Law Commission report on cohabitation and relationship breakdown. The report recommended that couples who had lived together for a qualifying period of time (2 years) should be able to have quasi-matrimonial rights in relation to property, cash and income and it took two years to be written.
Despite a widely held understanding that the Law Commission report would shortly be implemented in legislation, on 6 March the Justice Minister, Bridget Prentice, announced that the Government would not be implementing the recommendations made by the Law Commission last summer. This means that we are no closer to creating legal rights for the millions of cohabiting couples living in England and Wales.
The Justice Minister has said that the Government have decided to wait and see how a new scheme for cohabitees in Scotland performs before making any decisions about legislating for cohabiting couples in England and Wales.
This announcement will come as a blow to the thousands of cohabiting couples living in the South West who, for the first time, were close to getting rights that were previously only enjoyed by married couples. This means that there will continue to be potentially unfair and unjust results for people who have been in long term and committed relationships but who face the prospect of ending the relationship without any financial security because the law fails to protect them.
It remains a real problem that the common held misconception about ‘common law spouses’ leaves people unprotected and, most importantly, ignorant about their lack of rights. In some circumstances, there are things that lawyers can do to help – for example, changing ownership of the property or completing a cohabitation agreement – but that can only work for people who know that they need protection. Whilst 9 out of 10 people think that cohabitees should have financial rights against their partner, very few of the 90 % realise that at the moment, those rights are very limited.
Family lawyers and Judges have long been petitioning the Government to legislate in this area – society has changed drastically since this issue was last considered by the legislators and cohabitation is now increasingly common. Despite this, Governments remain increasingly concerned about legislating to protect cohabitants – perhaps not just for the fiscal reasons that the Justice Minister cites, but also the fear that such law would be unpopular with ‘middle England’ who still hold marriage as the ideal.
For more information or advice, contact Tamara Richardson
Tuesday, 11 March 2008
