Government consultation on cohabitation reform: Statement from Forsters’ Family team
The Family team at Forsters welcomes today’s announcement of the government’s consultation on reforming the legal framework governing relationship breakdown. Crucially, the proposals will include long‑awaited consideration of protections for unmarried couples on separation, marking a pivotal moment for the future of family law in England & Wales.
Reform in this area is long‑overdue – despite being the fastest‑growing family type in the UK, accounting for 17.7% of all families (approximately 3.5 million households), cohabiting couples remain largely without legal protection on separation or death. The consequences can be stark: one partner left financially exposed after years of shared lives, assets and responsibilities.
The consultation will grapple with a central challenge: designing a principled and coherent framework that reflects modern relationships, while preserving the distinct legal status of marriage and civil partnerships. This will likely involve a bespoke statutory regime, distinct from that of marriage and civil partnerships, but with an important point of convergence: a shared commitment to ensuring that fair outcomes for children are the focal point, regardless of their parents’ marital status.
The consultation will need to consider eligibility criteria for a new framework of rights for cohabitants, including minimum periods of cohabitation and the significance of children as a qualifying trigger. An opt‑out structure will likely feature, with questions around balancing protection for vulnerable partners with respect for personal autonomy where desired. This means parties can continue to enter into cohabitation agreements tailored to their own relationship.
The current system of financial remedies on divorce is expected to be within the consultation’s scope, with the government likely to take on board one of the four models of reform proposed by the Law Commission in 2024.
We also anticipate the consultation addressing the important question of how domestic abuse should be reflected in financial outcomes on divorce, alongside consideration of whether qualifying nuptial agreements should be placed on a statutory footing.
Addressing divorce rights at the same time as cohabitation law reform reflects a recognition that reform of cohabitation law cannot sensibly be undertaken in isolation from this framework – a framework that has remained largely unchanged for over half a century. Consideration of whether financial remedies on divorce should become more structured and predictable – particularly in the treatment of “needs” and the breadth of judicial discretion – may both inform the development of a cohabitation scheme and potentially pave the way for clearer articulation or even partial codification of the principles underpinning financial remedies on divorce.
The consultation will likely also examine rights on death for unmarried couples, including inheritance provisions where there is no Will.
Ultimately, the consultation offers a timely opportunity to reshape the legal landscape to better reflect how people live today: delivering a framework of rights and responsibilities for all relationships that aims to protect children and vulnerable partners, while preserving the distinction between marriage and cohabitation and respecting individual autonomy for those who wish to continue to make their own bespoke arrangements.
