Cohabitation Rights

The Women and Equalities Committee is proposing that cohabiting couples should be given parallel legal rights to married couples. A call for evidence closes on 4 July.

Under the Committee’s plans, the finances of cohabiting couples that split up or where one party dies would be handled as if the couple were married. But giving legal rights that mimic those of marriage to cohabiting couples devalues the currency of marriage.

Cohabitation is increasing, which is detrimental to couples, children, and society. Marriage is God’s design, and the evidence shows how this benefits all concerned. Couples living together without being married is far more transitory and unstable, and must not be treated as equivalent to marriage. If cohabitees are given legal rights, cohabitation will be encouraged, with disastrous results.

The Committee complains that those who cohabit “currently have less legal protection than those who are married”. But this is because these couples, who are free to marry, have chosen not to.

The Committee also argues that there is “a widespread perception that cohabiting partners have similar or identical rights to those who are married”. This is no reason to change the law, but rather to make sure that people understand the benefits and privileges – as well as the responsibilities – that marriage brings.

You can make a submission to the committee here.

The Christian Institute has provide helpful tips that could be used in response and are reproduced below.

Using your own words, please make two or three of the following points:

• The public commitment made in wedding vows gives families great stability. The Government should recognise and promote this, rather than undermine marriage by offering equivalent rights to those who choose not to be committed.

• Parental separation is far higher for cohabitation than for marriage. More than half of children of cohabiting parents will experience their parents’ separation by the age of five, but this is only 15 per cent for children of married parents.

•Family breakdown is exceedingly expensive for society, costing the public purse over £50bn each year. This will only worsen if the special legal status of marriage is not maintained and promoted.

•When couples get married, they promise lifelong commitment to one another. This is why the law makes provision for the death of a spouse. Such rights should not automatically apply to cohabitees who have made no such promises.

•Marriage benefits physical and mental health. Smoking and drug use is lower in married women than those cohabiting, and married men have better heart health and cancer survival rates.

•Creating another additional relationship status is completely unnecessary. Couples either choose to get married or not. Extending rights to an extra ‘cohabiting’ group undermines marriage and creates confusion.

•The Government should be raising awareness of the benefits of getting married and the legal problems with cohabiting. Making a fundamental legal change would blur the lines and reduce public awareness of the benefits of marriage.

•There are no difficulties that cohabiting couples can’t already address through other means. Inheritance concerns can be dealt with by writing a will, for example.

•Marriage makes a clear distinction between couples in a permanent relationship and those who share a home as housemates or lodgers. Giving special legal status to cohabitation would blur these lines.