Dissolution

Well, it turned out to be a lovely birthday. One of my colleagues greeted me by singing the Stevie Wonder version of Happy Birthday and people were generally very friendly and happy to eat my cakes. G came over and cooked me a really nice dinner and we ate more cake and had a good evening. So it was all good.

Another month of the year is over and already we’re into August. This year is just flying by and it’ll be Christmas before we know it. I did actually have some things that I want to say on this here blog but I need a bit of time to draw my thoughts together and so on. I was hoping for a bit of space to do that while I was on leave but it was all just so hectic that I didn’t have time to do anything but decorate and then spend a bit of time at the coast (it’s a hard life). Anyway hopefully I will blog those things soon.

I was thinking about the latest suggestion of giving co-habiting couples the same rights as those who are married and it has to be said that I don’t quite get how that would work. The cynical part of me says that all it will do is line the lawyers’ pockets. There are ( I assume) lots of cohabiting couples who if one of them dies the other then realises that they have no legal right to various things that had they been married they would have been entitled to – property, pensions etc etc. The thing is that if you don’t get married (or have some form of contract) how do you prove that you are entitled to it? Whilst there are some who would argue that they don’t need to get married to show their commitment and whilst people who get married aren’t necessarily any more in love or committed than couples that don’t the significance is that there is a formal contract as a staring point by which to then bring that relationship to an end (as perverse as that may sound). I can envisage a few complicated (and lucrative for lawyers) situations that could come up. First, that people spend months arguing when co-habiting began. Was it the day they ceased to each have properties or was it the day they started leaving a toothbrush at the other person’s house or somewhere in between? Second would be the scenario where someone becomes a serial cohabiter and takes each partner to the cleaners when they split up even if it has only been for a very brief period of time. The thing about marriage is that it draws a line in the sand and gets rid of the grey areas when it comes to formalising a relationship. Yes, it’s unromantic to think of it being useful to divvy up the goods in the event of a divorce but I don’t suppose divorce is that romantic either. There are also those who cohabit rather than marry because they enjoy the “benefits” of not having a legal contract – their stuff remains theirs even when the relationship comes to an end. I bet there are many people who when they realised the amount they lost on a divorce wished that they had never signed on the dotted line of the marriage certificate. It cuts both ways.

The thing is that people don’t plan for the worst possible scenario, they don’t plan to split up, they don’t live their life expecting their partner to die unexpectedly etc and that’s when cohabiting becomes a problem. People have lived under the deluded belief that there was some form of “common law partnership” that entitled them to things in the same way as those who were married. Surely the issue is therefore about educating people and making sure that they understand the difference between being married and just living together, people then make a choice and get the benefits (or otherwise) that go with that choice. I can’t see that changing the law is the answer because those who cohabit deliberately avoid entering into a legal partnership. Is it just me or is that not the significant point?