Affinities comment on "Cohabiting couples to get marriage-style financial rights"

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Tuesday, 31, Jul 2007 12:00

We wonder what will be the impact upon couples if these proposals are made law? At present couples who marry - and most do so now after a period of cohabiting - know what treatment they can expect if they divorce. If cohabiting couples are to receive similar treatment after say two years of cohabiting, will they be more inclined to split up before the end of two years, or will they actually prolong the period of cohabiting beyond whatever is the qualifying period and be even more deterred from getting married? Our guess is that men will become even more inclined to engage in short term cohabiting relationships, while women will become less likely to accept a cohabiting relationship unless marriage is intended by both parties. We suspect the proposals are just a recipe for more domestic violence, which according to some surveys now accounts for one third of all violent crime. The other aspect of the proposals which are problematic concern children: if the mother of a child is to receive no right to maintenance - there being only a right to a clean break settlement - are the obligations to be placed upon fathers going to be sufficient? Is this being fair to the children who will be second class citizens compared with the children of divorcing couples? The Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons that there are 200,000 more single mothers claiming benefits than there are single parent households, so, presumably, there are possibly around 200,000 fathers who are cohabiting who do not wish to be classified as such. The State seems to be more and more inclined to poke its nose into people's bedrooms, whilst it provides less and less protection to children from domestic violence, by failing to uphold the value of marriage. The mantra "we shall not promote one type of family structure over another" looks less and less tenable, as the State now seems to be saying, "we don't care what type of family structure you want, we are going to impose our rules upon you in any event". Whichever way you look at it, the attempt to escape from morality has failed.