Lammy’s cohabitation rules threaten unmarried couples with ‘horrendous’ court costs
Justice secretary Alex Norris is facing backlash from senior legal figures on plans to give unmarried couples court-enforced rights after three years of cohabitation, passed on to him by predecessor David Lammy.
The government is currently consulting on proposals to reform British couples’ cohabitation rights, which would give the courts power to intervene when unmarried couples break up after having a child or living together for three years.
Under the plans, courts could then divide assets in a way similar to when married couples divorce.
Baroness Ruth Deech, a crossbench peer and former law lecturer, has written to Norris arguing there is no clear public mandate for the proposed reform and it would upend the concept of consent.
“If it goes forward, it is so unfair as people would be plunged into an intimate and overwhelming legal status without their consent or knowing about it,” Deech told Morning Wire.
Lammy’s proposal, introduced in June and open for consultation until 14th August, would automatically impose financial, property, and inheritance rights on unmarried couples unless they both agree to legally opt out.
If one partner refuses to opt out, the law would still apply.
“If one person said they don’t want it and one said I do, the one who doesn’t want it would be held to ransom,” Deech said.
The crossbench peer said if people do choose to pay for lawyers in cohabitation disputes “the cost of litigation would be horrendous.”
“The costs would eat up most of the assets they are actually arguing against losing,” Deech said.
According to a new poll by Survation, 72 per cent of adults knew little or nothing of the reforms, while only 37 per cent supported it.
“No sane consenting adult will want to live with someone earning less than them again,” Deech said.
Government ‘turning a blind eye’ to the costs for court system
An extra 10,000 court cases per year could be created as a result of the reforms, critics have warned.
Commenting on the proposals, Judge Edward Hess, deputy national lead judge of the Financial Remedies Court, said the government has provided a “superficial and unsatisfactory analysis” of how this will impact the UK’s court system, which is already facing a huge backlog of cases.
“The reforms may well have wider benefits which make them objectively attractive; but turning a blind eye to the consequential costs cannot be right or sensible,” Hess said.
Deech told Morning Wire the government should instead “do nothing, as there is plenty of existing law covering this already”, or introduce a system instead where at least one partner can opt out without needing the others consent.
She said it would also be very time consuming for the government to introduce such a bill.
“A change like this would be a mammoth bill, and would need an awful lot of time in the Commons and Lords. Whether the government would actually find the time along with everything else on their plate, I don’t know.”