Wednesday, June 13, 2007

From the Netherlands to England, more on cohabitation laws

From Monday's Times of London, a report on changes being proposed to change English law for cohabitating couples:

Unmarried women and men will be able to make claims against their partners to demand lump-sum payments, a share of property, regular maintenance or a share of the partner’s pension when they separate. They will also be able to claim against their partners for loss of earnings if they gave up a career to look after children.

The reforms are to be published by the Law Commission, the Government’s law reform body.It is expected to drop any proposal for a time stipulation, so that only couples who had lived together for, say, two years, could bring a claim; or any bar on childless couples.

Plans that would have made it harder for the partner who stays at home to lodge a claim have also been dropped. Courts will no longer have to be satisfied that the unmarried couple jointly decided that one of them should give up their career and stay at home and that the decision was not made just by one of them.

Indiana has no law like this. You know this if you have read my other posts on cohabitation in Indiana, but why shouldn't we have such a law?

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