Cohabiters’ Rights
It appears that England and Wales are considering giving cohabiting couples better inheritance rights, which is certainly a good thing, but lawyers are complaining about it. I really don’t get this. If those people have shared their lives for so long, you should assume that each of them would want the other to have whatever they leave behind after death too. If one of them specifically doesn’t want that to happen, they’re free to write a will and state that fact, but if no such will exists then the default assumption should be that sharing your life includes sharing your wealth.
But this is just one part of the issue. I think that the amount of time spent living together is what should matter when determining what rights should people who are in a relationship have, not a simple piece of paper saying that they’re married! Ideally, married and unmarried people should have the exact same rights if they have been living together for the exact same amount of time. (I’m trying to avoid writing “couples” because I want to take polyamorous relationships into account as well.) That situation may be a long way off, but every step forward helps and every step back harms.
That proposed law appears to state that the surviving partner receives full inheritance rights after five years of living together with the deceased or if they have children together, while having no children and having lived together with the deceased for at least two years, but less than five, entitles the surviving partner to half of that amount. The part about having children really bothers me, as does everything that encourages people to have children, especially when it’s for such selfish reasons, so I wish they’d get rid of that, but the amount of time seems quite correct. I just wish the same law would apply to married couples as well…
Actually, if I were to think about it right now, I could even set ten years as the amount of time people would need to be living together for before getting all these “relationship” rights, though the amount of time should be reduced accordingly if the relationship started when all those involved were already past a certain age, to offer them a reasonable chance of obtaining all these rights before death. In that case, you could even have a few rights obtained after just six months, about half after two years and the vast majority after five years. This is, of course, not just about inheritance rights, but about all the rights and benefits that people who are in a relationship can enjoy.
I see that lawyer being quoted as saying that “there is a fundamental difference between people who are married and not married” and don’t really know what she’s talking about. I mean, yes, those who are married because “that’s how it should be” are more traditionalistic, those who are married just in order to obtain these rights and benefits are more selfish and perhaps more pragmatic, while those who are married for both of these reasons are both more traditionalistic and more selfish than those who are not married, but why would that give them more rights? If anything, those who get married in order to obtain these rights and benefits should be far less entitled to them!
The sort of reasoning that makes people say that the act of marriage carries such weight in itself is basically saying that people share more and become more dedicated to each other after going through a ceremony and signing a piece of paper than after living together and sharing every aspect of their lives for years. Thinking logically for just a fraction of a second should be enough to make everyone realize that such a concept is completely wrong, stop focusing on papers and ceremonies and move on to what really matters in a relationship.
Granted that some sort of evidence is required in order to certify that certain people have moved in together and consider themselves to be in a relationship, but that’s easy to obtain even without marriage. Actually, married people may not even live together at some point, so these requirements would be even more effective in determining who is truly entitled to those rights and benefits. I’m talking about something as simple as adding something to the documents that need to be filled when a person changes their residence, so they’ll be able to specify that they’re doing so in order to move in with their partner (or partners) and provide some contact information for them. The partner(s) would then obviously need to confirm this. And that’s all there is to it. Rights and benefits would automatically be granted as soon as the required amount of time would pass, as long as neither partner would contact the authorities to indicate the termination of the relationship or to change their residence without their partner(s) moving with them and no evidence of a separation would present itself.
I firmly believe that such laws would make people be more responsible and also avoid the situations that currently arise out of marriages of convenience, not to mention messy divorces. After all, we’re talking about obtaining rights and benefits as a result of managing to live together and maintain a relationship for an extended amount of time and not as a result of a ceremony that only requires a few minutes. And if any such individual rights and benefits would be lost by the one who leaves the relationship without having a very serious reason that’s clearly the fault of their partner(s), such as repeated abuse, it could even encourage people to put more effort into working out their differences, which would be another great thing.
It’d actually be better if the concept of legal marriage would be abolished entirely; it certainly would become pointless… Those who desire to get married in a religious setting would still be able to do so and the authorities would keep a record of these marriages for the benefit of the religions that do not allow their followers to have multiple partners at the same time or more than a certain number of partners during their lifetime, so nothing would change in that aspect. It’d just be a far fairer and more effective way of approaching this issue.
