An open letter to Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, Prime Minister.

Dear Prime Minister,

Joshua Rozenberg interviews the Chairman of the Law Commission in today’s Daily Telegraph. Three family law matters are touched upon: reform of ancillary relief law, pre-nuptial agreements and cohabitation law reform.

I note that there will be no reform of the law in relation to the division of a couple’s assets. The courts will continue to apply the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and I’m pleased about that. As a family law solicitor, I approve of the discretion given to the judges: it helps couples across the country who don’t have “big money”. I am very much against the equal division of assets as in other countries, because there are occasions when 50:50 cannot be fair. No two cases are the same.

I also note that the Law Commission will be examining the legal status and enforceability of pre-nuptial agreements. I can’t think why valuable public resources are going to be spent helping the very rich to protect their assets. Continue reading »

Proposed legal rights for cohabitants have one reader reaching for the panic button.

As regular readers are aware, I hold strong views about the Government’s reluctance to introduce new legislation for cohabiting couples. I believe that cohabitants should be allowed to put their relationship before the court in the same way that divorcing couples can. 

Not everyone agrees with me. One reader has contacted me to argue that the law should not be changed. I think he raises some interesting and pertinent points about cohabitation and remarriage, and I would like to explore his case in more detail.

Continue reading »

Cut the red tape: why won’t politicians help cohabiting couples?

I saw Baroness Thatcher on TV three times this weekend. I saw her twice on the Spitting Image reruns and laughed at the satirical takes on the absolute power she wielded over her fellow politicians. Then I saw her on the news, aged 82, leaving hospital. She was clearly very frail, but determined to walk unaided, despite her age and infirmity. Agree with her politics or not - and sometimes I did not - her spirit and fearlessness remain admirable.

Following last week’s debacle over cohabitation, I wish that our present leaders had such backbone! More than ever, I am convinced that in its dying years, our Government has become bogged down in red tape and paper-shuffling.

We have learned that the Government won’t be changing the law for cohabitants. Plans to do so are being held “in abeyance” while we wait and see how the Scots fare. This is because the Scots, who certainly don’t defer to opinions expressed in English media, have already changed their own law.

The message from Whitehall is, as usual, wrapped up in bureaucratic jargon and more red tape. Now taxpayers’ money is to be wasted on a futile “comparison” exercise; after that, I suppose, the subject will be quietly put to bed.

For goodness sake! Continue reading »

It is worrying that so few cohabitants have taken steps to safeguard their positions.

Cohabitation remains a popular choice of relationship in Britain. More than one third of people (36 per cent) have cohabited in the past, and one in nine (11 per cent) do so at present.

Unfortunately, my office is frequently consulted by an increasing number of cohabitants who have learned, to their great shock, that they have no legal remedy following the breakdown of their relationships.

In the midst of separation, a cohabiting couple experiences the same emotional turmoil as a married couple going through a divorce. Even so, there is little - if anything - that the law can do for them.

Gay couples entering into Civil Partnerships have the same rights as married couples. However, heterosexual couples who choose not to marry, or who may not be able to marry, have no automatic rights in law. 

Four years ago, the government launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness about this. Unfortunately, a new report has revealed that many in the UK remain confused about the legal consequences of living together outside of marriage.

The latest British Social Attitudes study, published by the National Centre for Social Research, shows that more than half of adults (51 per cent) still hold the mistaken belief that there is such a thing as “common law marriage”‘, which gives cohabitants the same rights as married couples. Continue reading »