The MoJ consultation also proposes stronger financial rights for co-habiting couples if they separate, with couples deemed to qualify if they have been living together for at least three years or have a child together.
The rights would not be as extensive as for married couples and are not about sharing resources, says Joanne Edwards, head of family law at law firm Forsters. Instead, a partner could be awarded a lump sum, transfer of property or pension share – but only if it were needed to meet basic needs, she says.
Edwards believes the proposed changes would be “transformational” for people experiencing domestic violence or coercive and controlling behaviour, who may otherwise be unable to afford to leave a relationship.
“We’re really pleased to see this consultation,” says Sam Smethers, CEO of the charity Surviving Economic Abuse, which has been campaigning for a reform to co-habiting laws.
Under the current system, people in co-habiting relationships who experience economic abuse must “walk away from their home, their savings, their financial security, just to escape the abuse”, she says. Legal routes for them to get access to their property after a separation are “very expensive and difficult to pursue” and they aren’t often successful in making their claims, she says.
Couples would be able to mutually opt out of the proposed new rights, as long as they meet certain safeguards, which could include getting independent legal advice and disclosing their financial situation to their partner.
Edwards says she thinks an opt-out system is the right way forward. “Too many people at present find out only too late that they have no rights at the end of a relationship,” she says.
Some critics of the proposals say they chose not to marry because they wanted to keep finances totally separate. “That was a conscious decision,” one person wrote on Mumsnet, external. “An opt-out scheme just reverses that default and makes us go through hoops to preserve it.”
Others say there are issues not covered by current proposals that they would like the government to address. Selina Flavius, from the charity Widowed and Young, says that after her fiance died, she would have liked the legal entitlement to have been involved in his funeral planning, as well as bereavement support payments.
