Cohabitation reform shelved

In July 2007, the Law Commission’s report – Cohabitation: the financial consequences of relationship breakdown – recommended that the law should make provision for cohabiting couples with children or who had been in a relationship for between two and five years. It also proposed compensation for cohabitants, who could show they had been disadvantaged economically during the relationship. The Government did not respond within the usual six-month period, but on 6 March the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced that it will not be proceeding with a new law because the Government is concerned about the financial impact of legislation and wishes to study the experience of Scotland. The Family Law (Scotland) Act 2007 contains provisions similar to those recommended by the Law Commission. The Justice Minister, Bridget Prentice, said the Government proposes to await the outcome of Scottish research into the cost of the scheme and extrapolate from it the likely cost of bringing the scheme into effect in England and Wales and the likely benefits it will bring. This has brought an outraged response from the family lawyers’ group Resolution, which continues to warn of the distress and hardship for cohabitants when relationships end. A British Social Attitude Survey in January revealed that nine out of 10 people think that a cohabiting partner should have a right to financial provision if the relationship was long-term, included children and involved prioritising one partner’s career. In an article in the New Law Journal of 4 April, David Allison, chairman of the Resolution Cohabitation Working Group described the decision as a ‘whitewash’ because the Government had specifically excluded research on cost from the Commission’s brief and no one within the Scottish Executive seems aware of any such research there. He added: ‘We already know what benefits this sort of scheme will bring – it will help to stop the tide of former cohabitants and their children falling into poverty on relationship breakdown.’ The survey revealed that 51% of people believe that cohabiting couples have rights as ‘common law’ spouses and 70% of the members of resolution believe that cohabitants are badly let down by the current law. Furthermore, at an adjournment debate on the issue in October 2006, Harriet Harman said that Government actuaries had calculated that, by 2031, there will be 3.8 million cohabiting couples and just 10 million married couples in England and Wales. She was clear that legislation was necessary to address the injustices suffered by so many under the current law and she said that the Government was committed to reform. What, asked Mr Allison, has happened to that commitment under Bridget Prentice?