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:
Unmarried Co-habiting couples
What are unmarried co-habiting couples? The difficult in the definition
Herring: The term “co-habiting couple” can range from a group of students living together in a flat share
To a boyfriend and girlfriend living together while contemplating marriage
to a couple who have deliberately avoided marriage but wish to live together in a permanent stable relationship
Barlow, Burgoyne and Smithson (2007):
Four types of cohabitees:
The Idealogues
Those who are in long term committed relationships but are opposed to the ideology of marriage
The Romantics:
Those who expect to get married eventually and see co-habitation as a step towards marriage
Which they saw as a serious commitment
The pragmatists
Those co-habiting who were deciding whether to get married based on legal or financial grounds
The uneven couples
Where one partner wanted to marry and the other did not!
Kimber v Kimber
Tyrer J:
The following factors might be considered in deciding whether there is cohabitation:
Whether the parties live together under the same roof
Whether they shared in the tasks and duties of daily life
Whether the relationship had stability and permanence
How the parties arranged their finances
Whether the parties had an ongoing sexual relationship
Whether the parties had any children and how each party acted towards each other’s children
The opinion of the reasonable person with normal perceptions looking at the couple’s life together
Some statutory attempts at defining it:
S.144 (4)(b) Adoption and Children Act 2002:
“Two people (whether of different sexes or the same sex) living as partners in an enduring family relationship”
Can adopt
Family Law Act 1996:
“two or more persons who, although not married to one another, are living together as husband and wife or (if the same sex) an equivalent relationship.
Some Stats
National Statistics (2007): 14% of Families are cohabiting couples
National Statistics (2008): 44% of children were born to unmarried couples
Matheson and Babb (2003): 80% of births to unmarried couples are registered by both parents
What’s the difference between the legal positions of spouses or civil partners and unmarried couples?
The Formalities at the beginning and end of the relationship
How they are different
The law closely regulates the beginning and end of a marriage or civil partnership.
It sets out certain formalities which must be complied with in order for a legal marriage/civil partnership to start
And it only ends when the court grants a decree absolute of divorce or a dissolution
Every legal marriage in the land is registered – there is no such requirement for cohabiting couples
One consequence is that you can cohabit with whoever you want.
Are we overstating this?
It’s true that the married need to divorce and cohabiting couples can just separate as they wish
However, the formalities are rather easy to comply with both at the start and end of the relationship
If you are unmarried, there’s an awful lot of paperwork and potential litigation to go through in order to separate joint bank account, bills, house etc.
Financial Support
As in Week 2 notes, there are quite a lot of differences between married couples and unmarried couples in terms of court powers of ancillary relief
The court can redistribute the assets of a married couple one to the other on divorce
The court can only declare ownership of assets for an unmarried couple – per Stack, it cannot change who actually has what based on fairness.
However...
It will matter a lot if you’re wealthy – but most couples don’t actually have that many assets, so the paperwork will be fairly simple for both married and unmarried couples
And the first thing the courts do will be to specify under Child Support Act 1991 and Children Act 1989 the position of maintenance
This will often take most of the assets
And applies equally to married and unmarried couples
And the courts have fought back against the lack of formal ancillary relief provisions by deploying equitable doctrines such as the constructive trust in order to provide some relief
– although obviously there’s quite a lot of litigation involved in this.
Parental Responsibility and Legitimacy of Children
Legitimacy of children used to be a key difference between married and unmarried couples, but this is not really relevant anymore
What is relevant is that while all mothers have parental responsibility
There is no responsibility given automatically to the father if the couple are not married (although they can register on the birth certificate)
Specific legal recognition for co-habiting couples
Provision on death
Inheritance (Provision for Families and Dependents) Act 1975 s.1
Where ...a person dies ...and is survived by any of the following persons:—
(a)the wife or husband of the deceased;
(b)a former wife or former husband of the deceased who has not remarried;
[F1(ba)any person (not being a person included in paragraph (a) or (b) above) to whom subsection (1A) below applies;]...
that person may apply to the court for an order ... on the ground that the disposition of the deceased’s estate effected by his will
or the law relating to intestacy, or the combination of his will and that law,
is not such as to make reasonable financial provision for the applicant.
[F2(1A)This subsection applies ...[if] during the whole of the period of two years ending immediately before the date when the deceased died, the person was living—
(a)in the same household as the deceased, and
(b)as the husband or wife of the deceased
Succession to tenancies (applies also to unmarried homosexual couples)
Ghaidan v Godin-Mendoza [2004]: D had lived in a stable homosexual relationship with Z, who was the protected tenant of a flat owned by C. When Z died, C started possession proceedings. D argued that the word “spouse” in...
Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Family Law Notes.
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...
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