You arrived at this page by selecting:A legal minefield for unmarried couples
There has been lots of talk recently about unmarried couples not having the same rights as married ones and what an outrage it is.
But why is it such an outrage? It seems to me that there is already a fairly simple process for couples who live together to get rights against each other enforceable in the courts. The process is called marriage. If a couple chooses not to get married then presumably they have reasons for that. Why should the law impose upon them duties and responsibilities that they have specifically decided not to carry.
What constitutes co-habitation anyway? Would one night of passion fit the bill or would it have to be more? If so, how much more? Would a year count, but 364 days not count? You can imagine the cries of protest from the people left out by wherever the arbitrary dividing line was set.
There are also people who have several relationships on the go at the same time? Is there going to be some sort of procedure whereby the competing claims of several partners can be considered so that one of them comes out tops?
Then there are same sex couples. Originally marriage was for a he and a she but it's now available to two of either. If the law were to change to say that a he and a she who lived together have legal responsibilities towards each other, whether or not they are married, then presumably in the interests of equality the same will have to be said in relation to two hes or two shes who live together. Presumably on one condition, that the couple concerned are in a relationship. If they just happen to live together because they like each other or are related to each other they will not be entitled to these perks.
By the time you have worked all that out you have realised that what it all boils down to is a proposal that we have state sponsored perks for sex. People who are at it get special privileges, and people who aren't don't.
The mind boggles. I think the law at the moment is nice and simple, you either get married or you don't end of story.
More importantly though, exploitation is exploitation, whether it takes place within a sexual relationship or otherwise. If our lawmakers think there is too much exploitation of one person by another going on in our society, then the answer is to make a law about exploitation, not a law about sex. Such a law that would cover everybody who is exploited by anybody else. To make a law that benefits people who are exploited only when the exploitation happens within the context of a relationship, marital or otherwise, is at best just to solve part of a problem, and at worst sheer discrimination against those who are being exploited outside the marital context.
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