On balance at the moment I can't quite see why people who want the same rights as married couples shouldn't just get married (where this includes civil partnerships). It's not like you have to make a big expensive party of it. Mind you I'm more inclined to reduce some of the rights for married couples.
*actually reads report*. Ah, I see they're talking specifically of rights to wealth when a partnership breaks down. That's difficult. I'm sure a lot of people do end up feeling hard-done-by when they've been sharing finances and split up. And it's hard to always come to an amicable agreement. I note I'd probably have ended up with a greater share of the wealth from the house if we'd been married. I'd hate to have had to taken it to court though.
I don't think there's anything at the moment stopping unmarried couples writing some sort of contract between then when pooling finances in order to ensure that something sensible happens when they split up. I'm pretty much of the opinion that anything like the plans outlined should be opt-in rather than opt-out - ie the default remaining as it is at the moment.
Ideally I suppose I'd like a three-part system: firstly voluntary civil partnerships for everyone (with a very wide range and not exclusively for actual and implied sexual relationships, e.g. some recognition that adults may effectively be living in partnership with parents who they are looking after, or that friends may be living together and as mutually dependent as husband and wife). Secondly, involuntary civil partnerships for the parents of children, and thirdly "marriage" meaning whatever religious types want to get up to in the privacy of their own church/mosque/temple or whatever, with no bearing on the couple's legal status.
my relationship situation does not fall into your narrow categories, you bourgeois oppressor!
I think damerell and I are agreed that even if we could agree on a location where we could both live we would want to murder each other in the first 48 hours. ;)
But there should be more rights for co-habiting groups.
Other than the assets thing, I'd be concerned about next-of-kin rights. As I understand it, if you are cohabiting, it doesn't matter if you have been together for 20 years - if something happens to your partner that requires next-of-kin type permission then legally you are not next-of-kin and therefore have no say.
I'm wary of anything that doesn't make sense applied to co-habiting non-couples. Sharing houses with friends and randoms is something that society will need more of if housing keeps being crazy, and it's one thing to say "I'm happy to live with you" and another to say "I'm happy to live with you and if we fall out that gives you rights to half my house and my pension". Aside from the impossibility of declaring whether two people living together are a couple or not except by their own declaration - so the rights would be kind of "opt in" if you had to sign to say you were a couple instead of just friends?
Commitments should be opt-in, not smuggled in. If you made co-habiting rights opt-out, then people who thought they were just considering the implications of physically living with someone might not consider that they were signing away their future too.
david jones (from livejournal.com)2007-07-26 12:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Kinda tricky to answer many of the questions in the poll if like me you don't believe that married (or co-habiting) couples should have any more rights or protection under the law than any other members of society.
I don't believe the government should have any truck with "marriage", but of course if individuals want to get married, then that's a private contract and that's fine. If the government thinks it's a good idea to offer tax incentives to the married (and I guess the biggie here is gifts and inheritance AFAIUI) then that's fine, but I don't see what it has to do with marriage. Just file a form JDT113a at your tax office (and this could declare an arrangement between you and your spouse, you and your daughter, or you and your bestie, whatever. At most one such arrangement per person). Personally I don't think that cohabiting or marriage should confer any sort of tax advantage (and in particular, no inheritance tax advantage), but I'm happy living in a society that does otherwise.
Marriage is a contract of mutual support and shared arrangments, the divorce courts should be open to anyone that can show they had a similar contract (written or unwritten) even if it wasn't marriage. I just skimmed the article and I guess it's saying the same thing. Not really sure I count access to a court as "right", but I suppose so.
I'm interested to note that of your married correspondents some have ticked only "married" and others have ticked both "married, cohabiting" to mean the same thing. Makes the graph rather meaningless.
Couples with children… [x] Should (morally) get married, or equivalent, or have a really good reason not to.
Personally, I feel marriage ought to be a religious ceremony and/or a romantic announcement and/or a big party and/or a contract people enter into. If the government wants to create a standard template contract they recommend, so be it, but I don't see why people who sign their standard version should enjoy any privilege over people who customise it.
I suspect much of the current legal reasoning dates back to the old bread-winner-and-housewife system.
I want to express some disagreement with people who think that the law should not have any role in regulating peoples' personal relationships.
The problem with this is that like other libertarian views it has an element of, "I don't care about anyone else, I'm all right". It's nice to imagine that responsible adults could think through the consequences of their actions, come to reasoned and written agreements, which they then stick to. But although you might do that (or accept the consequences if you don't), most people neglect to do that, and when they get into trouble it's not very helpful to say, "you should have drawn up a contract to cover situations X, Y, and Z beforehand."
I'll give three examples.
First, a married spouse automatically becomes next of kin for the purposes of things like transferrable pensions, agreeing funeral arrangements, medical operations if incapacitated, organ donations, etc. When your spouse is lying unconscious in hospital, it's too late to draw up a contract. The law really has to have a sensible position here. (I'll note that this is the issue that is most important to people campaigning for same-sex marriage rights.)
Second, a married spouse automatically inherits from their intestate husband or wife. (And in England and Wales, the marriage cancels any previous wills.) Most people neglect to make wills, and yet it's very common for one spouse to be financially dependent on the other. When your spouse dies, it's too late for him or her to draw up a will.
Third, a married couple can own property jointly without needing to enter into any kind of formal agreement to do so. When you're separating, it's probably too late to make a contract pointing out that you paid the rent on the understanding that you had a share in your partner's car.
Since it's common for people to cohabit for long periods without getting married, the law is going to have to take some position on these issues. It's all very well to say, "people should get married (or contract civil partnerships, or make their own written agreements)" but if in fact people continue to neglect to do so — and of course they will — then cases are going to keep coming up where the law as it stands is grossly unjust. I don't have any worked-out plan of my own for how the law ought to work: I just object to the idea that doing nothing is the right thing.
A couple of people upthread have said that cohabiting couples should write their own contracts. I'm curious: have you tried this? If you have, how did it work out?
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Cohabiting couples with no children...
[ ] Should get married or not expect extra rights.
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*actually reads report*. Ah, I see they're talking specifically of rights to wealth when a partnership breaks down. That's difficult. I'm sure a lot of people do end up feeling hard-done-by when they've been sharing finances and split up. And it's hard to always come to an amicable agreement. I note I'd probably have ended up with a greater share of the wealth from the house if we'd been married. I'd hate to have had to taken it to court though.
I don't think there's anything at the moment stopping unmarried couples writing some sort of contract between then when pooling finances in order to ensure that something sensible happens when they split up. I'm pretty much of the opinion that anything like the plans outlined should be opt-in rather than opt-out - ie the default remaining as it is at the moment.
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I think
But there should be more rights for co-habiting groups.
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Commitments should be opt-in, not smuggled in. If you made co-habiting rights opt-out, then people who thought they were just considering the implications of physically living with someone might not consider that they were signing away their future too.
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I don't believe the government should have any truck with "marriage", but of course if individuals want to get married, then that's a private contract and that's fine. If the government thinks it's a good idea to offer tax incentives to the married (and I guess the biggie here is gifts and inheritance AFAIUI) then that's fine, but I don't see what it has to do with marriage. Just file a form JDT113a at your tax office (and this could declare an arrangement between you and your spouse, you and your daughter, or you and your bestie, whatever. At most one such arrangement per person). Personally I don't think that cohabiting or marriage should confer any sort of tax advantage (and in particular, no inheritance tax advantage), but I'm happy living in a society that does otherwise.
Marriage is a contract of mutual support and shared arrangments, the divorce courts should be open to anyone that can show they had a similar contract (written or unwritten) even if it wasn't marriage. I just skimmed the article and I guess it's saying the same thing. Not really sure I count access to a court as "right", but I suppose so.
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[x] Should (morally) get married, or equivalent, or have a really good reason not to.
Personally, I feel marriage ought to be a religious ceremony and/or a romantic announcement and/or a big party and/or a contract people enter into. If the government wants to create a standard template contract they recommend, so be it, but I don't see why people who sign their standard version should enjoy any privilege over people who customise it.
I suspect much of the current legal reasoning dates back to the old bread-winner-and-housewife system.
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The problem with this is that like other libertarian views it has an element of, "I don't care about anyone else, I'm all right". It's nice to imagine that responsible adults could think through the consequences of their actions, come to reasoned and written agreements, which they then stick to. But although you might do that (or accept the consequences if you don't), most people neglect to do that, and when they get into trouble it's not very helpful to say, "you should have drawn up a contract to cover situations X, Y, and Z beforehand."
I'll give three examples.
First, a married spouse automatically becomes next of kin for the purposes of things like transferrable pensions, agreeing funeral arrangements, medical operations if incapacitated, organ donations, etc. When your spouse is lying unconscious in hospital, it's too late to draw up a contract. The law really has to have a sensible position here. (I'll note that this is the issue that is most important to people campaigning for same-sex marriage rights.)
Second, a married spouse automatically inherits from their intestate husband or wife. (And in England and Wales, the marriage cancels any previous wills.) Most people neglect to make wills, and yet it's very common for one spouse to be financially dependent on the other. When your spouse dies, it's too late for him or her to draw up a will.
Third, a married couple can own property jointly without needing to enter into any kind of formal agreement to do so. When you're separating, it's probably too late to make a contract pointing out that you paid the rent on the understanding that you had a share in your partner's car.
Since it's common for people to cohabit for long periods without getting married, the law is going to have to take some position on these issues. It's all very well to say, "people should get married (or contract civil partnerships, or make their own written agreements)" but if in fact people continue to neglect to do so — and of course they will — then cases are going to keep coming up where the law as it stands is grossly unjust. I don't have any worked-out plan of my own for how the law ought to work: I just object to the idea that doing nothing is the right thing.
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