16 May 2025
Law reform to give more rights to cohabiting couples has been on the campaign agenda for a long time, but is a blanket approach best? In this week’s NLJ, Caroline Bowden, consultant at Anthony Gold, looks at the difference between couples who have chosen not to legally regulate their relationship, and those where one partner has economic power and the other does not.
Bowden suggests introducing legal provisions to protect vulnerable cohabitees, rather than giving the same rights to everyone, whether they want them or not.
She writes: ‘Creating cohabitation laws by passage of time, or by contracting in or out, would be too much social change for many to stomach. Making it a better safety-net provision would avoid the arguments over personal autonomy, as well as prevent the predictable negative steps that the dominant partner would take to circumvent them anyway.’RELATED ARTICLES
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