A peer introduced a Bill designed to establish a framework of rights and responsibilities for cohabitants, with a view to providing basic protections in the event of relationship breakdown or death.
Source: Cohabitation Bill [HL], Lord Lester, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Text of Bill
Date: 2008-Dec
The Privy Council ruled that post-nuptial agreements – drawn up during the course of a marriage – could be legally binding. But it deferred to Parliament the issue of whether pre-nuptial agreements could also be legally binding.
Source: MacLeod v MacLeod, Privy Council 17 December 2008
Links: Text of judgement | Telegraph report | FT report
Date: 2008-Dec
A report said that the amount of money invested by the government specifically in support of married couples had fallen significantly in recent years, and was now less than that spent on support for same-sex couples.
Source: Dan Boucher, Marriage Support Services Review 2008, CARE (020 7233 0455)
Links: Report | CARE press release | Christian Institute press release | Telegraph report
Date: 2008-Oct
An article examined the age difference of marrying and divorcing couples, calculated by subtracting the wife's age from the husband's. Between 1963 and 2005, the distribution of age differences for all marriages was very similar in each year to the distribution of age differences for the subset of couples who married in that year but had since divorced. Although there was some evidence of small variations in the proportion of marriages that ended in divorce by age difference, there did not seem to be evidence of a strong association.
Source: Ben Wilson and Steve Smallwood, 'Age differences at marriage and divorce', Population Trends 132, Summer 2008, Office for National Statistics, Palgrave Macmillan (01256 329242)
Links: Article | ONS press release | FT report
Date: 2008-Jun
A think-tank report said that declining marriage rates were not a sign of the death of marriage. The fact that the majority still wanted to marry, despite it no longer being socially 'necessary', showed that marriage was in fact more popular than ever. There was a striking relationship between income and family structure: at the time of birth, 55 per cent of single parents and 43 per cent of cohabiting parents lived in disadvantaged areas, compared with 26 per cent of married parents.
Source: Anastasia de Waal, Second Thoughts on the Family, Civitas (020 7401 5470)
Links: Civitas press release
Date: 2008-May
Two elderly sisters failed in their attempt to challenge inheritance tax rules through the European Court of Human Rights. They had argued that they were discriminated against because they did not qualify for the same tax protection as a married couple or civil partners. The Court ruled that, because the sisters' relationship was of a different nature to that of married couples and homosexual partners, they had not suffered discrimination and there was no violation of the Convention on Human Rights.
Source: Burden v United Kingdom, European Court of Human Rights (+33 0 3884 12018)
Links: Text of judgement | Guardian report
Date: 2008-Apr
A report said that forced marriage should be recognized as a form of bullying and domestic abuse. The definition of forced marriage should be expanded to include 'false marriage', where a person had been tricked into giving consent through false information or the withholding of critical information about the other party. All agencies and individuals dealing with forced marriage should adopt the victim-oriented approach recommended by the government's working party on forced marriage.
Source: Nazia Khanum, Forced Marriage, Family Cohesion and Community Engagement: National learning through a case study of Luton, Equality in Diversity (nkhanum@aol.com)
Links: Report | MOJ press release | LGA press release | MPA press release | CofE press release | MPACUK press release | Guardian report | BBC report | Community Care report
Date: 2008-Mar
In 2006 (according to provisional figures), the number of marriages fell by 4 per cent, compared with the previous year, to 236,980. This was the lowest annual number of marriages since 1895.
Source: Press release 26 March 2008, Office for National Statistics (0845 601 3034)
Links: ONS press release | Guardian report | Telegraph report
Date: 2008-Mar
The government responded to a report by the Law Commission on the financial consequences of relationship breakdown for cohabiting couples. It said that it would await the outcome of research on the Scottish experience of similar law reform before taking any action on the report's recommendations.
Source: House of Commons Hansard, Written Ministerial Statement 6 March 2008, column 122WS, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Hansard
Date: 2008-Mar
An article said that, although the policy of the opposition Conservative Party towards marriage and families was 'fundamentally flawed', a convincing 'narrative' on the institution of marriage was yet to emerge from centre-left political groups.
Source: Kate Stanley and Graeme Cooke, 'Something old, something new ' Public Policy Research, Volume 14 Issue 4
Links: Abstract
Date: 2008-Feb
An article examined trends in suicide by marital status in England and Wales. Married people had a lower risk of suicide, and despite an overall reduction in suicide rates since the early 1980s, there had been no narrowing of the gap in suicide rates between those who were married and those who were single (never married) or divorced.
Source: Clare Griffiths, Gita Ladva, Anita Brock and Allan Baker, 'Trends in suicide by marital status in England and Wales, 1982-2005', Health Statistics Quarterly 37, Spring 2008, Office for National Statistics, TSO (0870 600 5522)
Links: Article | ONS press release
Date: 2008-Feb
An annual survey of social attitudes found that 70 per cent of people thought that there was nothing wrong with sex before marriage, compared with only 48 per cent in 1984. Some two-thirds of people (66 per cent) believed that there was little difference, socially, between being married and living together; and only 1 in 4 – 28 per cent – thought that married couples made better parents than unmarried ones.
Source: Simon Duncan and Miranda Phillips, 'New families? Tradition and change in modern relationships' in Alison Park, John Curtice, Katarina Thomson, Miranda Phillips and Mark Johnson (eds.), British Social Attitudes: The 24th Report, SAGE Publications Ltd (020 7324 8500)
Links: Summary | NatCen press release | Telegraph report | BBC report | FT report
Date: 2008-Jan
An annual survey of social attitudes found that people were confused about the legal consequences of living together outside marriage. Half of adults believed (wrongly) that there was such a thing as 'common law marriage', which gave cohabitants the same rights as married couples.
Source: Anne Barlow, Carole Burgoyne, Elizabeth Clery and Janet Smithson, 'Cohabitation and the law: myths, money and the media' in Alison Park, John Curtice, Katarina Thomson, Miranda Phillips and Mark Johnson (eds.), British Social Attitudes: The 24th Report, SAGE Publications Ltd (020 7324 8500)
Links: Summary | NatCen press release | Telegraph report | BBC report | FT report
Date: 2008-Jan