BRITAIN: Cohabitants in Britain could gain similar rights to married couples and gay couples in civil partnerships under proposals by law reform body the Law Commission.
Gay couples who have not registered their relationship under the Civil Partnership Act introduced last year will similarly hope to benefit from the proposals which could see unmarried couples win rights to share each other's wealth in the event of a break-up.
While expected to be more limited than the divorce laws, the new measures could give partners rights to maintenance and lump-sum payments as well as a share of property interests and pensions.
There were an estimated 2.2 million cohabiting couples in Britain last year, while the government actuary's department estimates that by 2013, almost four million couples will be living together outside marriage.
Such cohabiting couples or civil partnerships have few statutory rights. Ministerial concern about this discrimination grew during the drafting of the civil partnership legislation giving registered same-sex couples many of the rights available to married couples.
The issue has acquired added urgency with rulings by the law lords in respect of payments to spouses in divorce cases.
Launching its consultation with a view to formal proposals next year, the commission said it was focusing on the financial hardship suffered by cohabitants or their children on the termination of the relationship by separation or death. Its project looks at people living together "in relationships bearing the hallmarks of intimacy and exclusivity, but who are not married to each other or who have not formed a civil partnership".
Key issues include whether cohabitants should have access to legal remedies providing periodical payments, lump sums or transfers of property from one party to the other when they separate; whether, where a cohabitant dies without a will, the surviving partner should have an automatic right to inherit; and whether contracts between cohabitants, setting out how they will share their property in the event of their relationship ending, should be legally enforceable.
The commission insisted the measures would not damage the institution of marriage by encouraging couples to live together rather than take vows, and might actually encourage more people to marry.