In 2004, the U.K. parliament passed the Civil Partnership Act which provides a scheme to enable same-sex couples to obtain formal recognition of their relationships through the registration of a civil partnership. When the Civil Partnership Bill was making its way through parliament, attempts were made in the House of Lords to derail the Bill through amendments seeking to extend the Bill to certain familial relationships of care and support. In order to counter these attempts and to facilitate the removal (...) of the amendments, the government gave the assurance that the matter of the economically vulnerable cohabitant would be referred back to the Law Commission for England and Wales for review. Consequently, in July 2005, the Law Commission commenced its project on cohabitation. This paper seeks to examine models of reform (such as the one proposed by the Law Society of England and Wales in its 2002 Cohabitation report) as well as those introduced in other Commonwealth countries. The aim is to identify some of the crucial questions that the Law Commission will need to give careful consideration to if they are to make recommendations that will provide a more radical approach to this area of the law, rather than adopt the more conservative approach of including cohabitation in ‘piggy back’ mode on the marriage model. (shrink)

In July 2002, the U.K. Law Commission published its Discussion Paper No.287 on home-sharing. The conclusion drawn by the Law Commission was that it would not be possible to devise a statutory scheme for the resolution of family property disputes which is both workable and flexible enough to deal with the wide range of personal relationships that exist. It further took the view that, with appropriate changes to the way in which trusts principles are currently interpreted and applied by the (...) courts, these trusts principles are sufficiently flexible and coherent to deal with the question of ascertaining and quantifying property rights over the family home. The aim of this paper is to examine the implications of these particular conclusions drawn by the Law Commission for both the law of trusts and the resolution of family property disputes between cohabitants. In particular, the paper will consider the extent to which trusts law remains a workable and desirable option and whether any mileage may be gained by drawing on the human rights culture that is emerging in U.K. legal and political discourse. (shrink)