THE two million couples who live together but choose not to marry should have greater legal rights, the President of the Family Division believes.
Sir Mark Potter favours “a measure of legislative protection for unmarried heterosexual couples in long-term relationships”. That would be “similar to but less than” the rights enjoyed by married couples.
Many people wrongly believed that there was such a thing as a “common law marriage”, he told The Times. Couples who chose to live together without marrying and had raised a family out of pooled resources often found themselves in difficulty when the relationship broke down.
He emphasised that he was not proposing civil partnership for unmarried couples along the lines of that for same-sex couples; rather, greater rights for those who had lived in long-term relationships to a share of property and finances.