New rights for cohabiting couples

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bonnie1

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Hi, Ive just read in the newspapers this morning about the proposed new rights of unmarried couples relating to property etc. What if a couple do not want these rights? Do they only come into effect if contracts are signed by both parties?
 
Unmarried couples are to be given legal recognition regarding property, wills, social welfare payments, taxes etc etc. Its on the cover of the Independent.
 
bonnie1 said:
Hi, Ive just read in the newspapers this morning about the proposed new rights of unmarried couples relating to property etc. What if a couple do not want these rights? Do they only come into effect if contracts are signed by both parties?
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How long do you have to be co-habiting for this to be applicable?
 
Sounds to me like they are proposing is something quite akin to marriage. To marry you give the registrar 3 months notice and you turn up and take the wedding vows - all rights automatically follow. What is being said here is that no rights automatically acrue to unmarried couples in the absence of officially registering their union. After cohabiting for 3 years and having registered the relationship the rights sound very similar to that of married couples. The registering of the relationship sounds much the same as a civil marriage - maybe I'm missing something subtle.
 
Presumably it applies to homosexual couples and siblings etc. as well - giving such categories of people these rights without the difficulty of such an emotive word as "marriage" being bandied about in the press.
 
I thought the idea underlying this was to protect vulnerable women who aren't aware of their rights, and in the story it says:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial] But it said it was time to "debunk the myth" that so-called common-law wives and husbands have legal rights.
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Ray Byrne, director of research at the LRC said: "Couples who have been living together for a long time wrongly assume that they have a degree of legal protection but they don't.
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However, it then mentions contracts being signed...presumably people unaware of their legal rights will similarly be unaware of these contracts?

The original three years related to the proposal whereby the State would "marry" co-habiting couples after three years, if they failed to do so themselves. If this is a voluntary contractual matter, why have any qualification period at all?
 
bonnie1 said:
Unmarried couples are to be given legal recognition regarding property, wills, social welfare payments, taxes etc etc. Its on the cover of the Independent.
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This is long overdue if you ask me but remember its only being talked about there are no laws yet
 
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