8
ISSUES: Marriage
Chapter 1: Marriage
“Some people don’t like the phrase man
and wife” – the campaign for equal civil
partnerships
There are lots of straight couples who don’t want to get married but worry about
the financial and legal risks of cohabiting. Extending civil partnerships could be one
answer – and the pressure is growing.
I
can’t recall when my partner and I
agreed we wouldn’t get married. It
may have come up in discussions
about our home lives: her parents had
had an unpleasant divorce when she
was young, which rather ruined the
romance of marriage; my unmarried
parents had had a rather pleasant
separation, which left me unsure as to
the point of the institution in general.
Over the years, though, this abstract
opposition to marriage has become
more concrete. Buying a (shared-
ownership) house forced us to ask why
we didn’t want the legal protections of
marriage, to go with the intertwining
of our lives in other respects. We were
named in each others’ wills, paid bills
and rent from a joint bank account and
owned a house in common: why not
make it all official?
Part of the answer was that the
tradition of marriage remained a turn-
off. For me, its history is hard to ignore:
a woman may not have to swear “to
obey” any more, but the institution
remains the same. Symbolism is a
powerful thing, and it’s not something
an individual can erase at will. My
partner has her own objection: she
doesn’t want to be a wife, a word with
a loaded history.
We aren’t alone. Many people are
turning their back on marriage,
choosing to cohabit without any formal
legal partnership, or cobbling together
the best they can with a mixture of
contract law, trust law and hope. For
some, such as my parents, this works:
their separation didn’t come with years
of legal wrangling, and the balance of
power in their relationship was largely
equal.
But it can also come with risks.
Such couples have no protections,
responsibilities or bonds, beyond those
they have explicitly put in place. There
is, contrary to popular belief, no such
thing as a “common law marriage,” a
fact that many only discover when it’s
too late. “There is no better protection
than what marriage gives people,” says
Shlomit Glaser, a family law expert at
solicitors Glaser Jones Law. “Because
historically, that was the reason for
marriage: to give protection, usually to
the wife, and define the obligation of
the husband.”
Without legal protection, a relationship
that turns sour can become extremely
damaging. “I had a situation where a
woman ended up without heating in
her house when her partner said he
wouldn’t pay for it,” Glaser says.
Cohabiting couples are slowly gaining
some rights. In early February, a
landmark supreme court case ruled
that cohabitees are automatically
entitled to the pensions of their
deceased partners, even if they are not
explicitly nominated as a beneficiaries.
But it’s unlikely that there will ever
be an automatic bundle of rights for
unmarried partners. That could pose
a problem, with people accidentally
burdening themselves with inalienable
responsibilities purely by moving in
with a loved one. Glaser suggests that
a piecemeal approach to the problem,
amending specific bills such as those
governing inheritance or taxation,
would allow for the most glaring
injustices to be rectified without
introducing new problems.
There’s another potential solution,
though. The UK already has a legal
construct that provides a couple
with the same rights as in marriage,
while dispensing with the potentially
distasteful symbolism. The downside is
that it’s only available if both partners
are the same sex.
Civil partnerships were introduced
in 2004, as a compromise short of
legislating for same-sex marriage.
Almost immediately, a campaign was
launched to allow mixed-sex couples
to obtain civil partnerships, but it
contained an element of legal trickery:
the hope was that a ruling that civil
partnerships
were
discriminatory
would set a precedent that could open
up marriage to same-sex couples.
With the passage of the Marriage
(Same Sex Couples) Act in 2013, that
motivation was rendered moot.
Yet the campaign for mixed-sex
civil partnerships continued. Nine
months after the first same-sex
marriage ceremonies took place,
Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan
launched a judicial review after being
turned away from Chelsea town hall,
where they had tried to register a
civil partnership. After years of legal
wrangling, the Royal Courts of Justice
are set to hand down a judgment on
the matter on Tuesday.
Steinfeld and Keidan’s case quickly
attracted supporters, and grew into
the campaign group Equal Civil
Partnerships. Matt Hawkins, the
group’s campaign manager, argues
that a change in the law would provide
the perfect model for people like
me and my partner. “There’s a whole
constituency of people out there who
don’t like marriage,” he says. “They
don’t like the phrase ‘man andwife’, and
don’t like the patriarchal implications,
but they do want the legal benefits.”
It would be a surprisingly easy change
to institute. The Conservative MP Tim
Loughton, who has introduced a bill
in parliament aimed at equalising
civil partnerships, told the House
of Commons in January: “All that
is required is a simple one-line
amendment to the Civil Partnership
Act 2004.” The substantive section of
Loughton’s bill comes to just 25 words.
