With human rights magic you can turn an unmarried woman into a widow
by Andrew Tettenborn, Rebel Priest:
A lawyer, says Richard Bayan in his Cynic’s Dictionary, is an advocate hired to bend the law on behalf of a client. For this reason he is considered the most suitable background for entry into politics. Facetious as this may sound, it gets uncomfortably close to the truth. Witness events in the Supreme Court last week: an unmarried woman who wasn’t a widow claimed that whatever English law said, she ought to be entitled to a widows’ allowance.
Siobhán McLaughlin, from Northern Ireland, lived with a man for twenty-three years. She had four children by him. They never married because he had promised his first wife not to remarry. He died. She claimed a Widowed Parent’s Allowance. This was refused on the understandable ground that the law limited such allowances to widows and you couldn’t be a widow unless you’d been married in the first place.
In its infinite wisdom, the Supreme Court decided that she ought to be entitled to the benefit. It went on to declare that the law denying it on the grounds of her non-marriage was incompatible with her human rights (and apparently her children’s) to family life and to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions.
How so? On any ordinary reading, nowhere does the European Convention on Human Rights give you a right to social security, let alone a widowed parent’s allowance, whether you are married, unmarried or living in a Jedi union. Nor does it say anywhere that benefits that go to married people must go to unmarried ones as well.
Read also: Fair enough if couples don’t want to get married, but why should they have the legal rights of those who do? by Tim Stanley, Telegraph (£)
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