Skip to main content

Cohabitation and the Law Commision's Project

Wong, Simone (2006) Cohabitation and the Law Commision's Project. Feminist Legal Studies, 14 (2). pp. 145-166. ISSN 0966-3622. (doi:10.1007/s10691-006-9025-y) (KAR id:1550)

Abstract

In 2004, the U.K. parliament passed the Civil Partnership Act which provides a scheme to enable same-sex couples to obtain formal recognition of their relationships through the registration of a civil partnership. When the Civil Partnership Bill was making its way through parliament, attempts were made in the House of Lords to derail the Bill through amendments seeking to extend the Bill to certain familial relationships of care and support. In order to counter these attempts and to facilitate the removal of the amendments, the government gave the assurance that the matter of the economically vunerable cohabitant would be referred back to the Law Commission for England and Wales for review. Consequently, in July 2005, the Law Commission commenced its project on cohabitation. This paper seeks to examine models of reform (such as the one proposed by the Law Society of England and Wales in its 2002 Cohabitation report) as well as those introduced in other Commonwealth countries. The aim is to identify some of the crucial questions that the Law Commission will need to give careful consideration to if they are ti naje recommendations that will provide a more radical approach to this area of the law, rather than adopt the more conservative approach of including cohabitation in 'piggy back' mode on the marriage model.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/s10691-006-9025-y
Additional information: The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
Subjects: K Law
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > Kent Law School
Depositing User: A. Davies
Date Deposited: 19 Dec 2007 19:02 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:40 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/1550 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.