Why give cohabiting couples marital rights if they shun marital rites?

Aug 19, 2018 by

by Andrew Tettenborn, Rebel Priest:

A couple who’ve been living together for years belatedly decides to tie the knot and put things on a proper basis. This is a situation becoming, surprisingly enough, rather commoner today. A matter for joy, you might be forgiven for thinking: indeed, if you were seriously old-fashioned you could add that it would have been even better if they’d got round to it sooner.

For most couples it’s also a good idea for another reason too: if a married (or civil-partnered) couple split up, or one dies, there are provisions for inheritance and property division, but in the case of old-fashioned cohabitation there are none: the parties, or the survivor, simply walk away with what, if anything, each then owns.

Oddly enough, however, in this topsy-turvy world such late decisions to regularise matters are regarded as a matter for concern – at least if you’re a member of the London establishment and a Guardian reader.

Witness in this connection a formal letter in Saturday’s paper from a number of luminaries, ranging from the chairman of the Bar to the directors of Rights of Women and ginger group Legal Action. The problem as they see it is that it’s wrong to expect people to do even as much as this.

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