Cohabitation (Contract Enforcement) (Hansard, 11 June 1991)

§ Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the enforcement of contracts entered into between cohabiting partners; and for connected purposes. The Bill seeks to encourage people who share a home or property to make proper contractual arrangements about their joint possessions. It sets out the ownership rights to prevent family quarrels and bad feelings if the relationship breaks down, and gives guidance to the courts when dealing with such cases.

In recent times, there has been a considerable change of behaviour in society as many more people set up homes together without making any formal arrangements. They may be two friends who decide to share a house together. They may be elderly people who decide to give up their own homes to move in with younger relatives and who invest all their savings in that new home or they may be young couples. Nowadays, almost 1 million young couples aged between 18 and 40 live together without any formal arrangements about the property that they jointly use and enjoy. Those relationships are particularly important, as they may involve children who may not be protected if those relationships break down.

Friends can fall out, granny can die or a partnership may break up. In those circumstances, all hell often breaks loose, because there is a dispute about who owns what. There is no specific body of law to protect people in those circumstances, even if a contract between the parties exists. For historical reasons, the courts have been loth to recognise the intention behind such agreements even if they exist. That attitude harks back to the time when a man and woman who lived together without a formal marriage were deemed to be living in sin.

Couples who live together may do so through choice, but sometimes they do so because one of them cannot obtain a divorce from a previous partner. Such relationships can break down, as do marriages, but whereas both partners are much better protected under matrimonial law and are usually entitled to equal shares in the joint property, there is no such protection for couples who are simply living together.

It is a commonly held belief that, after living together for some time, people acquire rights as the common-law wife or husband. That is true in Scotland, but it is not true of England and Wales, and has not been for the past 230 years. People do not automatically acquire rights to maintenance or, in the case of the death of one of the partners, to property that was held jointly during that relationship. A woman left in such circumstances often has no right even to remain in what is the family home to care for the children of the relationship. There is a case for the Government to introduce legislation to make matters clear.

In a recent case, a woman who had helped to build up a successful business in partnership with the man with whom she had lived for 10 years was told by a judge that she had no rights to the value of that business because, early on in the relationship, she had refused marriage. In those circumstances, the judge decided that she could not claim any ownership of the business that had been built up.

792 Another couple lived together for 30 years without being married, because the man was married to a Catholic who would not divorce him. That couple had six children and they built up a home. On his death, however, the woman found that she had no rights to that home or to any other property. All the property was claimed by the man's wife.

Such cases cause a great deal of unhappiness. People often seek the help of lawyers, but they are unable to give it, as there is no body of case law from which the lawyer can draw. He therefore has to fall back on the property rights involved. One is told that, if one has a receipt for the house, the three-piece suite, the kitchen cabinet or whatever, one can claim for it. Otherwise, it is usually deemed to be the property of one partner, and not necessarily the partner who paid for it.

Three young women solicitors of Coventry have done a great deal of work on this subject. They have written an excellent book to explain the problem called "Living Together". Those who are interested may well obtain a copy. The authors outline many sad cases. There was a case in my constituency of two policemen who were killed while working as divers. One was married to his partner, so his wife had full rights to pensions and so on. In the other case, the relationship was not a formal marriage so the woman got nothing—no pension, no house, nothing of what she was entitled to.

Increasingly these days, elderly people give up their own homes and go to live with younger relatives. They may put a lot of money into these buildings—perhaps buying a new and larger house—but without a will or a contract, their estate can make no claim on the property that they brought into the relationship. That is another good reason for encouraging contracts of this sort.

In other cases, young people sell their homes and go to live with grandad or granny, but they find that they cannot get on together and that the money that they put into repairs or modernisation is completely lost to them, and they can get nothing of it back.

All these events need regularisation by new legislation. The courts need guidance so that judges dealing with these cases know what Parliament expects of them. Young women especially go into these relationships starry-eyed and come out baggy-eyed and the worse for wear. It is time Parliament considered the matter seriously and introduced some sanity and guidance to the law. There is an urgent need for the Government to give such guidance to the public and the courts.