If marriage is ‘just a piece of paper’, Labour’s latest proposals to revolutionise family law raise an awkward question. Why is the government so keen to give the legal consequences of that ‘piece of paper’ to people who never signed it?
The Government’s consultation on cohabitation law, A Fairer End to Relationships, closes at midnight. The consultation proposes a new automatic legal framework for unmarried couples who have lived together for more than three years, giving courts powers to make financial orders affecting property, pensions and capital when they separate.
The lyrics capture something increasingly familiar in modern relationships
One might be tempted to think that imposing financial obligations on break-ups would inspire a needed dose of responsibility into a generation of serial monogamists. But the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has newly-published research suggesting that importing some of marriage’s legal consequences into cohabitation could have consequences far beyond lengthy court battles a hefty fee at the family lawyer’s office. In Finland, where a similar ‘marriage-lite’ policy was introduced in 2011, the results have not been to foster increased stability and permanence amongst co-habiting couples – but rather, the opposite. Women’s first marriage rate was 23 per cent lower within seven years of the reform than it would have been in its absence. The change was not followed by an increase in household stability amongst cohabiting couples, which also declined in the following years.
