British Social Attitudes: The 25th Report

Abstract

The 2000 British Social Attitudes survey confirmed a growing social acceptance of heterosexual cohabitation as a partnering and parenting choice and identified strong public support for reform of cohabitation law (Barlow et al., 2001). It also established the existence of a 'common law marriage' myth whereby the majority of the public, and cohabitants in particular, falsely believe that cohabiting couples who have lived together for some time have the same legal rights as married couples (Barlow et al., 2001). Even among those cohabitants who were aware of their vulnerable legal position, it was found that very few had taken appropriate steps to gain or provide legal protection despite, as we found in subsequent research, often having good intentions to do so (Barlow et al., 2005). These findings prompted widespread media interest and government concern. This led the Department for Constitutional Affairs (now the Ministry of Justice) to fund their 2004 Living Together Campaign, aimed at advising cohabitants about their legal rights and indicating practical steps they could take to gain marriage-like protection where possible. 1 Subsequently, in 2005, with Scotland having already decided to reform the law relating to cohabiting couples (see Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006), the government decided to refer the issue of whether cohabitation law should be reformed to the Law Commission for England and Wales, a decision which sparked further media interest. The attention paid to cohabitation over the last few years makes it worth revisiting the subject, to see whether, and how, behaviour and attitudes are changing. 2 So our first aim in this chapter is to examine the evolving prevalence and role of cohabitation as a relationship form in British society. Our second aim is to establish whether attitudes to cohabitation have changed, and whether legal knowledge and actions have increased following a period of sustained

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