Are we talking about the same thing? Civil partnerships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_partnerships_in_the_United_Kingdom) are marriage for same-sex couples. But ewx is talking about the proposed extension of some aspects of law to couples who are neither married nor in civil partnerships, and I was commenting on that.
Anyway, assuming this was just a slip, I'll go on:
That's three distinct issues IMO which should be covered separately.
They are three issues showing that the law has to take a position on what rights and responsibilities people have with respect to each other. They all show situations in which it can be unjust for the law to take no action. So they go together.
Inheritance: there's a very longstanding contractual means for fixing this, the will, and a "traditional" set of defaults. We don't need a new mechanism, but it might be worth changing the defaults.
I think we're in agreement here. It's the default position (that is, unmarried partners have no rights in case of intestacy) that's the problem.
It's reasonable to sue for part-ownership of property which was jointly bought, or had that sort of understanding surrounding it. You then bring in the bank records showing that only one partner paid rent and the other paid insurance+repayments for both on the car, and you have something that looks like a case.
Perhaps you can say more about this. It sounds a plausible enough theory, but do you know of any cases where this has happened?
What the civil partnerships thing is trying to assert [is] that relationships don't exist in a vacuum and society gets a say in that disposition. Given that we've been moving in the opposite direction for 50+ years, is this really a good idea?
With the caveat about "civil partnerships" I noted above, I disagree with this paragraph. Have we really been moving away from idea that society gets a say in peoples' relationships? Some trends point one way (greater acceptable of unmarried and same-sex relationships), but some trends point the other way (less acceptance of marital rape and corporal punishment of children). I don't see any clear pattern overall.
Where there is an obvious trend, it's that it is now much more common now than fifty or a hundred years ago for people to have long-term relationships without getting married. However, this doesn't mean that unmarried couples have no need of protection under the law. They have exactly the same needs as married couples, they just don't have the magic piece of paper. So I think it's right for the law to take account of the changed social landscape.
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Date: 2007-07-31 07:19 pm (UTC)Are we talking about the same thing? Civil partnerships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_partnerships_in_the_United_Kingdom) are marriage for same-sex couples. But
Anyway, assuming this was just a slip, I'll go on:
That's three distinct issues IMO which should be covered separately.
They are three issues showing that the law has to take a position on what rights and responsibilities people have with respect to each other. They all show situations in which it can be unjust for the law to take no action. So they go together.
Inheritance: there's a very longstanding contractual means for fixing this, the will, and a "traditional" set of defaults. We don't need a new mechanism, but it might be worth changing the defaults.
I think we're in agreement here. It's the default position (that is, unmarried partners have no rights in case of intestacy) that's the problem.
It's reasonable to sue for part-ownership of property which was jointly bought, or had that sort of understanding surrounding it. You then bring in the bank records showing that only one partner paid rent and the other paid insurance+repayments for both on the car, and you have something that looks like a case.
Perhaps you can say more about this. It sounds a plausible enough theory, but do you know of any cases where this has happened?
What the civil partnerships thing is trying to assert [is] that relationships don't exist in a vacuum and society gets a say in that disposition. Given that we've been moving in the opposite direction for 50+ years, is this really a good idea?
With the caveat about "civil partnerships" I noted above, I disagree with this paragraph. Have we really been moving away from idea that society gets a say in peoples' relationships? Some trends point one way (greater acceptable of unmarried and same-sex relationships), but some trends point the other way (less acceptance of marital rape and corporal punishment of children). I don't see any clear pattern overall.
Where there is an obvious trend, it's that it is now much more common now than fifty or a hundred years ago for people to have long-term relationships without getting married. However, this doesn't mean that unmarried couples have no need of protection under the law. They have exactly the same needs as married couples, they just don't have the magic piece of paper. So I think it's right for the law to take account of the changed social landscape.