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Law Notes Family Law Notes

Civil Partnerships Notes

Updated Civil Partnerships Notes

Family Law Notes

Family Law

Approximately 416 pages

Family law notes fully updated for recent exams at Oxford, UK. These notes covers all the major LLB family law cases and so are perfect for anyone doing an LLB in the UK or a great supplement for those doing LLBs abroad, whether that be in Ireland, Canada, Hong Kong or Malaysia (University of London).

These notes are formed directly from a reading of the cases and main texts and are vigorous and concise.

Every major topic is dealt with in three ways:

A) One page summaries of important c...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Family Law Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Civil Partnerships

Legal Basis

  • Civil Partnership Act 2004

    • Created notion of Civil Partnership

    • Where just over 7000 in 2008, fall of 18% in 2007 – not really surprising b/c backlog of people wanting to get hitched just after the Act

    • What is says is that essentially gets same sex marriage

      • Could have been very short Act - i.e. where in law says “spouse” read “or civil partner”

      • In fact, just went line by line to change it specifically

        • So is hundreds of pages long.

What are the differences between civil partners and marriage?

  • When it actually starts

    • A marriage starts on the exchange of promises (the “I dos”)

    • Civil Partnership = signing of register – bit more of objective evidence than marriage

  • Cannot include a religious element

    • Civil Partnership can’t have religious bits – can have that afterwards, but can’t be part of the ceremony

    • But marriage can have some religious elements

    • Equality Act 2010 has changed that – if a religious group wishes, it can conduct a religious ceremony as part of that

      • Some Quakers and liberal Jews have said that would like to do this.

  • Effect of the Civil Partnership

    • Sec of State for Work and Pensions v M

      • Baroness Hale

        • Civil Partnerships have virtually identical legal consequences to marriage

    • Manthorpe:

      • While the CPA recognises the legal relationship between the couple, it does not recognise legally any relationship between the partner’s children or wider family

  • Grounds for the civil partnership being annulled under CPA 2004 s.49

    • These are the same as for marriage EXCEPT the voidable grounds are slightly different in that two of them do not appear in the CPA 2004

      • Lack of consummation is not a ground for avoiding a civil partnership

      • Nor is the presence of a Venereal disease

  • Divorce

    • These are again nearly the same grounds as for marriage

      • EXCEPT that “adultery” is not a ground for dissolving the Civil Partnership.


How do we react to the differences?

  • Some = minor technical differences, so does not matter

    • Signing of register is irrelevant

    • Voidable grounds only used by conservative religious views, unlikely to apply, still got legal divorce

    • Adultery – just use unreasonable behaviour – just a trivial detail.

  • Others = these differences do indicate something of great significance symbolically

    • Shows distaste for same-sex sexual activity

      • Baroness Scotland: can’t define consummation in gay relationships, it is totally different

      • Herring: but can define in criminal law, why can’t we define it here?

        • Are we not making it an element because we don’t approve of it?

    • The name

      • Is this of symbolic significance

      • It can’t have the name of marriage – is it saying that not the same as marriage, or not quite as good?

What are the reasons against gay marriage?

  • Gay marriage is not a human right

    • Kitzinger – X and Y went through a valid same sex marriage in Canada, before moving to the UK. They applied for their marriage to be recognised. They were told that they could have a Civil Partnership recognised, but not a marriage. X and Y argued that this was an infringement of the ECHR Art 8 and 14.

      • Sir Mark Potter

        • Article 12

          • Read in a straightforward manner it seems clear that the wording of Art.12 refers to the right to “marry” in the traditional sense

            • (namely as a marriage between a man and a woman) according to the national laws governing the exercise of that right

          • It is true that the Convention and its Protocols must be interpreted in the light of present-day conditions.

            • However, the court cannot, by means of an evolution interpretation,

              • derive from these instruments a right which was not included therein at the outset

    • Herring: This appears odd as the ECHR is not normally interpreted in terms of legislative intention...

  • Gay marriage is not a “family” in human rights terms

    • M v Sec State Work and Pensions [2006]:

      • Lord Bingham

        • No doubt Ms M has less money to spend than if she were required to contribute less

          • But this does not impair the love, trust, confidence, mutual dependence and unconstrained social intercourse which are the essence of family life,

            • nor does it invade the sphere of personal and sexual autonomy which are the essence of private life.

      • Lord Walker

        • I am content to assume that the unit consisting of M,

          • her new partner and (especially when living with them) their children by their former marriages

            • should be regarded as a family for article 8 purposes

              • But the legislation in question only has a tenuous link to family life

      • Baroness Hale (dis)

        • The child support scheme is clearly capable of affecting the enjoyment of the right to respect for the family life of the mother and father and their children.

          • There is no doubt that family life was established between this mother, this father and their children

        • In my view, the difference in the treatment of homosexual and heterosexual relationships by the child support scheme

          • in relation to the family lives of the parents and their children has to be justified if it is not to fall foul of article 14 .

    • Wilkinson v Kitzinger [2006]:

      • Sir Mark Potter:

        ...

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