London Family Solicitors aks: "Do You Know Your Separation Rights"?
Our society is always changing, and so are the relationships we share with the people we love. More of us are choosing to remain unmarried, and recent statistics place the number of people living together out of wedlock at more than four million. To ensure that the future can be stable and secure for you both, it is important to make arrangements in advance should you both separate. Taking advice, however unromantic it may seem at the outset, is an important safety net.
Hard though it is to think about a future where you lose your partner through death or a separation, it is in your interests to plan for the worst. If you co-habit with your partner but do not have any ownership rights to the property where you live, you may lose the right to continue living there should your relationship end. So, if you are moving in with your loved one for the first time, or you are in a long-term relationship and have not considered this process yet, what options lie ahead of you?
Firstly, you could consider asking for your name to be added onto your tenancy, or onto the title deeds of the house you share. In the event of the breakdown of your relationship, this would ensure that you have some interest in certain assets to protect yourself in the short-term. The usual stages following on from breaking up include ensuring that you evenly divide any money that remains in joint bank accounts. Also, if one of you is going to continue living in the property you shared, you will need to ensure that the person who is moving out is able to 'cash in' the share of the property they have currently. A cohabitation agreement, also known as a 'living together' agreement, is something that you might wish to consider, but as these have not been tested fully in the UK courts just yet, learning about the benefits before signing any dotted lines will be worthwhile.
It is always sensible to contemplate a will on any change of circumstances. Despite the fact that younger couples may not have many assets to split, it is important to ensure that solicitors and families know the wishes of a person should they pass away. Another grey area can be if you are in a civil partnership, and even though a judge may be able to distribute assets in a way that is similar to that of a heterosexual couple, there may be some slight legal differences to bear in mind.
One of the most important issues for cohabitating couples should be if they have had children together, and the rights of the parents should a separation occur. A mother automatically has parental responsibility for her child from birth. However, the conditions for fathers gaining parental responsibility varies throughout the UK.
In England and Wales, if the parents of a child are married to each other at the time of the birth, or if they have jointly adopted a child, then they both have parental responsibility. Parents do not lose parental responsibility if they divorce, and this applies to both the resident and the non-resident parent.
This is not automatically the case for unmarried parents. According to current law, a mother always has parental responsibility for her child. A father, however, has this responsibility only if he is married to the mother when the child is born or has acquired legal responsibility for his child through one of these three routes:
- (from 1 December 2003) by jointly registering the birth of the child with the mother
- by a parental responsibility agreement with the mother
- by a parental responsibility order, made by a court
Living with the mother, even for a long time, does not give a father parental responsibility and if the parents are not married, parental responsibility does not always pass to the natural father if the mother dies.
All parents (including adoptive parents) have a legal duty to financially support their child, whether they have parental responsibility or not. Like in most situations, where a mother is unwilling to consent to signing such an agreement, it may be necessary to go through the courts to acquire the right to see your child on a regular basis.
Another important factor to realise is this; you cannot be married to another person under common law, as this practice has not been around since the middle of the 18th century. If you want to prevent being vulnerable when going through the difficult stages of a break up, it is important to ensure you are protected and seek proper legal advice; nobody knows exactly what is around the corner.
For any further information on this and other family law matters, please contact our litigation department at Southampton Row Solicitors.
