Download PDF version of this page31/07/2007
Press release
Issued by the Catholic Communications Network
Bishops’ Conference Response to the Law Commission's Report on Cohabitation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
31 July 2007
The Law Commission’s Proposals concerning the financial consequences of cohabiting relationship breakdown are designed to alleviate the hardships that can arise when cohabitants separate. It is to be hoped that when the Government consider this issue, it will do so in the light of two guiding moral principles:
1. the duty of the state to promote uphold and safeguard marriage as the basis of family life, the best and most stable environment for bringing up children
2. The duty to remedy manifest injustice and alleviate unacceptable hardship or vulnerability to the extent that it merits the protection of the law.
The Law Commission have been careful to devise a scheme for cohabiting couples who separate which is entirely distinct from that which applies to spouses on divorce. One cohabiting partner would have to show that he or she suffered a continuing disadvantage as a result of contributions made to the relationship during the cohabitation. When regrettably married people divorce, legal provisions centre around the notion that both partners had made a commitment to share the whole of their lives together and thus that they share equally what they possess. Couples who cohabit and deliberately choose not to marry forgo the responsibilities and obligations of marriage, and still forgo, under this scheme, the legal benefits of marriage. It is proposed that they have to give evidence of ‘economic disadvantage’ deserving of ‘financial relief’.
The welfare of any children of the cohabitation is rightly to the fore in this proposed scheme, but it is not clear why the Law Commission have recommended that the couple should only be eligible when they had cohabited for a certain number of years ( the number not being specified yet). When the Law Commission consulted the Bishops’ Conference about this issue, a major concern expressed was that any scheme should not in any way equate cohabitation with marriage, and, in particular, it was thought that identifying a minimum duration of the cohabiting relationship began to create a new legal status of cohabitation with attendant rights and entitlements. This remains a real concern.
Reading the Law Commission’s proposals with all the complexities and implications of the proposed measures leaves one all the more convinced of the rightness of marriage as the basis of family life. We believe that being happily married is something that the majority of young people today still aspire to, and it is vital to the common good of our society that we create and sustain a legal framework that supports and encourages them in this aspiration.
John Hine
Auxiliary Bishop of Southwark. Chair of the Bishops Conference of England and Wales Marriage and Family Life Committee.
31 July 2007