She writes:
According to the bulletin, there were 3.1 million opposite sex cohabiting couple families and 90,000 same-sex cohabiting couple families in the UK in 2015. Altogether, cohabiting couple families account for 17% of all families in the UK and that percentage seems set to increase.
As family structures have changed over the years, one popular misconception about cohabitation has persisted: namely, the belief that cohabitants, if they have lived together long enough, become “common law” husbands or wives, with the same rights as married couples and civil partners on relationship breakdown. The truth is very different – there’s no such thing as a common law husband or wife. In particular, whereas married couples and civil partners have access to special legal remedies to deal with the financial consequences of their relationship ending, cohabitants do not. Instead they must rely upon complex rules from trust and land law. Because these rules were not designed for family circumstances, they often give rise to unjust outcomes. In a particularly infamous case, a woman received nothing after a seventeen-year relationship, despite having given up work to raise the couple’s children and contributed throughout the relationship to the household expenses.
If it is enacted, the Cohabitation Rights Bill (currently being considered by the House of Lords) will go some way to redress the balance. Its rationale is “to provide certain protections for persons who live together [or who have lived together] as a couple…and to make provision about the property of deceased persons who are survived by a cohabitant”.
At present though, anyone who is contemplating cohabitation or who is already cohabiting should seek advice as to the legal implications. A Cohabitation Agreement can formalise cohabitants’ living arrangements and establish their rights on the breakdown of the relationship.
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For more information please contact Alexandra Gooden on +44 (0)1223 225260 or [email protected].
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