Cohabition Laws Still no Clearer After Landmark Ruling

The laws surrounding cohabiting couples have been raised again this year, following the announcement of a highly anticipated judgement ruling at the Supreme Court in the UK. In relation to the Jones vs. Kernott case dating back to May 2011, the judges announced their final ruling in the case, which did very little to clear up the law in relation to the rights of cohabiting couples as many had hoped it might.

In the Jones vs. Kernott case, a unmarried couple bought a property and brought up their children there. The relationship did not work out, Mr. Kernott then moved out, purchasing a property for himself financed by a policy that the couple agreed to cash in after they had tried and failed to sell their home. Ms. Jones continued to live in the family home, taking care of the children and making the mortgage payments by herself. Fourteen years down the line, Mr. Kernott came back asking for 50 per cent of the value of the family home. In its final ruling, the supreme court found in Ms. Jones favour and Mr. Kernott had to take away his original ten percent stake in the propertys value. Although this judgement seems like the right one, the issue in this case was that the 2011 case was the last of four court cases undergone in order to try and find a final resolution for this one case, with each of these court cases reaching a differing conclusion.. And all due to the fact that Ms. Jones and Mr. Kernott were not married.

Cohabitation law has turned into a more pressing matter over the past few years due to the fact that an increasing numbers of long term partners choosing not to marry. There is also the factor of rising house values to consider and former partners now often have to take to the courts to settle disputes over significant sums of money where the law is just simply not concise enough on this issue for couples or their lawyers to make sense of where they stand.

A popular misundertanding is that there exists such a thing as Common Law, which means that if a couple have been living together for for a certain amount of time that the law treats the couple as if they are married. This is not true. There is no such common law arrangement. When it comes to arguments over assets, the British law courts cannot simply share things out in as fair a manner as they can, as they can with couple who are legally married. When it comes to unmarried couples, they only have the power to share things out in terms of who can legally be shown to own the assets.

This is an area of the law that needs to be reformed for for modern living arrangements. Sadly, the current government made an announcement in September last year that has no intention to do so in this parliament.