John Hooper & Co

Solicitors

Newsletter 18 – The rights of cohabitants

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

In our Newsletter of July 2008, we referred to a Private Member’s Bill about the rights of cohabitants. The Cohabitation Bill, as it is unsurprisingly called, received its first reading in the House of Lords on 11th December 2008.

Legislation for cohabitants is long overdue. In spite of the fact that approximately 50% of couples now choose to live together instead of getting married - there is no legal framework for resolving disputes when relationships breakdown.

Married couples (in accordance with the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973) and same sex couples (in accordance with the Civil Partnership Act 2004) are able to resolve their disputes by reference to recognised legal principles. However, Cohabitants have had to rely upon the complicated, rigid and expensive Law of Trusts and various Acts of Parliament which were not designed to deal with the intricacies of couples who decided to spend some or a large part of their lives together.

The Cohabitation Bill is to be warmly welcomed and its speedy passage through Parliament and on to the Statute books supported and championed. It will not provide a solution for all cohabitee cases (it is envisaged that there will be a 2 year qualifying period of cohabitation). However, it will provide, for the first time in English legal history, a proper framework for the resolution of the issues that arise in the event of a breakdown of a cohabitee relationship. Again, please watch this space…

April 2009

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