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You don't have to call your partner your wife/husband, you don't have to wear a wedding ring or have some ceremony.
Surely you can strip it right down to the document signing (and a few words), get it witnessed (like a tenancy agreement or owt) and you're done.
No religion required.
Maybe registry office weddings aren't as simple as that. But there's no reason you have to have some intense ceremony and all that.
Well I'm not the one appearing to depict marriage as one life-long contract to safeguard financial and legal rights.
Why do some people get so defensive and threatened about loving cohabitating couples getting similar rights?
At the risk of appearing at next week's Private Eye neophiliac's column, cohabitating couples are the new gays.
Are you afraid of divorce? Is that it?
Becuase you seem to want everything that makes the marriage but ewithout the legal declaration. I guess it's hard to understand why you want take 20 minutes out of your life to aquire the very things you seem to want.
I don't think anyone feels threatened.
Except gays have to sign a legal document too. IN fact they welcomed the idea.
Aside from the name, what'd be the differences?
I'm not being defensive at all, as I've no interest in marriage related things.
But what loving aspect of marriage? Judging by many of the comments from married people here, one could be forgiven for believing the only reason they got married was to secure their financial and legal position.
I'm not afraid to get married. I simply don't want to do it.
According to the Guardian, one in six couples are already cohabitating. By 2031 it will be one in four. Many of us will never get married, and many of those will end up staying together longer than a great deal of marriages.
How many does it have to be before some people agree to equality?
This isn't some kind of 'us' and 'them' contest or war. Everybody should enjoy equal rights.
I almost get the feeling if the law were to be changed some married people would feel 'cheated' and resentful. As if they had done the 'sacrifice' of getting married and now other people were getting the same rights as them 'the easy way'. As if getting married was a chore and a burden, rather than a joy and a willful act of love.
I don't know if it is threatened, resentful, jealeous or something else, but other than NQA there is definitely a rather bizarre, borderline hostile line here from most married posters.
Indeed they should.
Oh, hang on they already do. Doesn't matter if you are straight or homosexual, black or white, if you go through a civil ceremony you get certain rights.
It seems like you want inequality to me.
I'm starting to wonder too.
Please define it.
And that's exactly it.
What Aladdin really wants is all of the perks without any of the responsibility.
But lets humour him.
What EXACTLY are the rights you want?
Do you want to take the responsibility that comes with those rights?
How would you manage your new shiny system?
How would you decide when a partnership becomes "co-habiting"? Do friends who live together get these rights?
Why are you too lazy to get a bloody will if you want your partner to get your stuff?
Not that I expect an answer. Aladdin doesn't yet seem able to quite grasp an elementary idea like "marriage is what you make it".
So what is the fundamental difference between a cohabiting relationship and a marriage for you? But the converse is also pertinent. What is so hard about getting married? Why the passionate objection?
Millions of people in this country do not feel like getting married is a step for them.
Yet under the current situation anyone who doesn't embrace the institution could find themselves in a world of bother if their partner dies or separates from them.
Seeing as we're talking about essential rights here there is no valid reason why people should be forced to get married to get such basic rights.
Why would anyone oppose a change in the law? It's really beyond me.
If you had paid attention you would notice that one of the main changes would involve maintenance rights for separated spuoses.
We'd all stand to lose money just as much as gain it by the new laws.
I'm yet to see what enormous responsibilities getting married brings to people that other lesser mortals are free from.
1. Er, as discussed at lenght throughout the thread, the same rights married couples enjoy, from inheritance to mainteneance to support to child care. Many of such rights are simply not covered by wills or other provisions.
2. We are asking to be able to take the responsibilities that come with those rights. They're both different sides of the same coin anyway.
3. The same way you manage marriages
4. Moving in together is a good clue. No.
5. A will doesn't cover much of it. I'd thought you would have known that.
It's a personal thing. I shouldn't have to be forced to enter any institution to receive what are basic and fundamental rights any more than you guys should be force to carry ID cards.
My problem with your viewpoint is simply that cohabiting couples are a heterogeneous group and it is not for the state to make assumptions about what each person wants when the couple have the option to obtain the rights you desire through marriage. The only reason I can see for not doing so is a desire to get out of the relationship without nasty complications of a divorce, or an irrational fear of the marriage ceremony itself.
how would this work eactly without a marriage procedure?
why should living with my partner automatically force me to pay maintenance if i earn more than them?
So why on EARTH would they feel that any other legal declaration would be a step for them?
What basic rights are you talking about?
What's wrong with the system as it stands? Nothing is stopping ANYONE in this country from going through the legal process of declaring someone their next of kin with a view to their recieving the benefits of that, either through a will or through marriage. Basically the only thing that's stoping people is their own stupidity or laziness.
The above woman, goes on to say that if they had known about an easy way blah blah blah. Honestly, it was her and her partners own foolishness that kept them from protecting each other from the worst case scenario. I feel her her grief, but if they were really so in love then they would have at the least made sure they changed their wills.
For the same reason you would have to if you were married.
We and countless others have neither irrational fears of marriage nor are we afraid or any divorce proceedigs. We simply don't like the idea of entering the institution of marriage.
What's so hard to understand about that?
If you fail to see that then you must have been living on another planet your entire life.
The aformentioned about 285 times already on this thread. :rolleyes:
Yes, descend into insults and bigotry as well. How progressive of you.
To a degree. Though a caring society is supposed to recognise such cases and ensure people receive what they deserve, instead of demanding they must formalise their relationship through a centuries-old institution in order to do so.
Well in a legal sense, there's not actually that much is there? Both are legal proceedures, both require witnesses and both can be entirely secular.
Well, actually, you haven't every time you've been asked for them you've avoided or ignored the question.
Yes... that's obviously what I'm doing no... really, I should have though harder before, in fact right now I should write to my MP and request that he personally should knock on every door in his contituency to ask each and every person whether they'd like her majesty's government to consider them life partners, and while he's at it, wipe their noses for them.
Is that it?! That's it's old? Seriously, spell it out, here and now, what is wrong with marriage? What is wrong with the system as it stands? It can't possibly be any religious tie can it? You're far too rational for that, and I'm sure you're aware that in fact religious verse is banned from a ceremony held in a registry office.
Er... no. I have discussed it at lenght through the thread.
Well you are the one descending to simplistic, insulting and completely wrong generalisations about those who choose not to get married.
There is nothing wrong with marriage. It is simply not for me, and for several million others, for a number of reasons.
And unless I woke up inside the pages of a George Orwell novel this morning, that is all you and others need to know about it.
Nearly all tax breaks are covered by the presence of children, not by the presence of marriage. Take the disgraceful abolition of MIRAS, for instance.
So by signing a legal document in front of a registrar and two witnesses?
So if we called a civil marriage a "civil partnership" would that do?
If so, that's pathetic.
Is it?
Some people move in together after two weeks, and then split up after six.
Define relationship. Define living together.
Do friends who live together and sometimes have sex with each other come into this category?
Actually, when it comes to possessory rights, it does.
Take your situation. The fact that you are joint proprietors of your property means that you have protection. Become joint tenants and get a restriction placed on your property stating that disposition of the property cannot be made by a sole proprietor and you have all the legal protection you want. Your estate cannot boot your lass out. Any decent lawyer will tell you that in about six seconds.
And then if you make a will to state that you want your estate to pass to your lass, it will do so. Pension rights, the lot.
Finally, what gives the state the right to force me to give my stuff to someone else when I have not expressly stated that I want them to have it? How will you work the law, will it be opt-in (in which case you need witnessed documents) or will it be opt-out (in which case the private wishes of people, as stated in wills, will be revoked on their death)?
If you want your lass to be protected you get your house in order. You sign the will, you sign the legal partnership document already available and waiting for you to sign it.
I don't agree with enforced and mandatory regulations from the state to do with people's private affairs, which is why I am against any moves to change the law. If you want something to happen, you say so. If you say nothing it should not be assumed that you do want it to happen, and any law certainly should never override a will.
As I see it, if you wanted to state that your spouse was your spouse and next of kin, you would ensure that they were. If you don't state that then, well, they're not.
I do agree with all people being able to sign a legal partnership document stating that they want their partner to be their next-of-kin and spouse, and have the rights and responsibilities encumbent with that. But everybody in this country can now do that- rightly- so I don't see what the fuss is about.
No. You asked how do you manage my new "shiny" system? The answer is like you would a marriage. You don't do anyting unless the couple separates or one of them dies. If either case happens, you take the same steps as you would with a divorce/death.
That's perhaps why some are proposing a minimum period of living together in order to qualify.
Well when a man and a woman are physically attracted to each other sometimes they er...
I'm sure you get the rest.
Do I really have to Kermit? It's not rocket science.
No.
I don't see what the fuss is about either about loving cohabitating couples getting the same rights and responsibilities as married couples do. Yet from the reaction from some quarters you would think we were asking people to sell their first born to a paedophile ring.
Existing legal documents don't cover everything Kermit, by a long shot. And then there is the novel and outrageous concept that even if a couple hadn't got all their documents in perfect order perhaps they deserve support and help after they have been committed to a loving relationship for many years, instead of being left to rot in the gutter.
If you have children you're supported.
Yes, I did.
How would you manage it? How would you enforce it?
So you would signn a document in front of a registrar with two witnesses, and would have to apply to a judge to terminate it?
How long?
And why that length?
Or two people of the same gender, of course.
How do you prove that two women, say, weren't in a relationship if one says they were and one says they weren't?
What fuss?
Loving cohabiting couples can get the same rights as married couples.
If they choose not to, then that's their choice. It's not for the state to intervene in people's personal lives.
Equitable rights usually cover the rest.
And you STILL haven't answered why the state should enforce things on people that haven't said they want them. If I don't want my partner to have my house and pension, then whose place is it to make me give them to them?
The only practicable way of ensuring rights are delivered fairly is to make people sign up to them. Do you agree?