Common-Law Misconceptions

By: Andrew Stuart
of www.yourmoney.com

Arsenal and England soccer star Ray Parlour was recently ordered to pay his ex-wife Karen a third of his earnings for the next four years in a high profile divorce case. And this £444,000 a year income was on top of two mortgage-free houses worth over £1 million, plus a lump sum payment of £250,000.

While most people don’t earn the million plus ‘wages’ of ageing premiership footballers, and will find it hard to comprehend the sums of money involved, this case shows that marriage can be a very expensive business – especially if it ends in divorce.

However, the Government is concerned that Britain’s two million cohabiting couples should also be made aware of their responsibilities in the event of them splitting up.

Common-law myth
The Living Together campaign, through the Advicenow.org.uk website and a marriage research charity called One Plus One, sets out to debunk the ‘common-law’ myth. The legal status of a common-law wife or husband was actually abolished in 1753, but many people wrongly believe that common law marriages exist and that cohabitees have similar rights equivalent to married couples.

Other worrying delusions include two-thirds of women wrongly thinking that simply because they have lived with a partner for five years that they have the automatic right to financial support.

And nearly half of those surveyed for the report reckon that after five years living together a surviving partner would automatically get the deceased partners possessions if there were no will.

The campaign is encouraging cohabitees to draw up Loving Together Agreements, which set out exactly what will happen should they split up, covering such things as ownership of property. It is also stressing the importance of making wills.

It is believed that one-in-six of different sex couples living together aren’t married and that by 2021 the total number of such couples will rise to three million.