Partners bill is bad news for cohabiting couples

THE first two-thirds of the Civil Partnership Bill would enable a same-sex couple to have their partnership registered with the state.

The final one-third of the bill plans to set financial rules for two people living together for three years (five, if amended as recent news reports suggest). The bill proposes that if two people separate after those few years together, one could sue the other for regular maintenance money, a lump sum, rights to the house or part of the other person’s future pension.

This would apply whether they have children or not. The only effect of children in the bill is to shorten the qualifying period to two years. You can get maintenance for your children under the law already.

There is a substantial minority in Ireland (mostly younger adults) who think the rules of marriage take away from a person’s freedom to such a degree it is not worth it for the financial safety net provided. These young people choose to live together rather than get married because they value their independence and do not like the idea of being a dependent adult. Up to the middle of the last century, while this was always an option under the law, social norms put strong pressure on young people not to just live together, but rather always to marry.

Irish society has improved in the past 30 years so that people can exercise a choice that was always legal. The earliest couples living together had to struggle for this social right. They risked their families cutting off contact with them.

In more recent times couples living together have it easier because the early couples pushed society to change by making what was then a hard choice. The social freedom to live together and not marry has been hard won. If the bill is enacted, such people will have their hard-won option reduced. If the bill is enacted the state will be telling these people they may live together and not marry, but if they split after three years (five, if amended) they will be treated much as married persons separating or divorcing, with one person having a legal hold on the other.

This would be a serious reduction in freedom to choose between the somewhat dependent form of couple relationship (marriage) and the form where both parties plan to be more independent and self-sufficient.

The bill provides that people can opt out of its obligations, but this requires both parties’ agreement and a court can override such an agreement.

It is people aged 25 to 35 who will be affected. They have little awareness of this bill and politicians may be about to take freedom away from many people who don’t even know it is happening.

Peter O’Hara

Raheen

Limerick