A MERSEYSIDE family solicitor is teaming up with a top law maker to throw her weight behind proposed legislation aiming to make life easier for cohabiting couples, carers and siblings living together.
Jo-anne Lomax, from Wirral law firm Lees and Partners, says she is campaigning to end the injustice and financial hardship faced by thousands of people who live together but are not married.
She is a member of Resolution, a 5,000-strong group of family lawyers, who are working with QC Lord Lester of Herne Hill to introduce a Bill into the House of Lords in the autumn.
The Bill’s introduction is part of a recently-launched Living Together campaign by Resolution and Lord Lester’s Odysseus Trust.
Lord Lester is a veteran human rights lawyer who successfully introduced the Forced Marriages Bill and was instrumental in developing the 2004 Civil Partnership Act.
Ms Lomax said: “It is a scandal in modern Britain that existing law does almost nothing to prevent people from losing their home or sliding into poverty if their relationship breaks down or their partner dies.
“Sensibly-drafted legislation is urgently needed to tackle the vulnerability not only of unmarried cohabiting couples and their children but also co-dependent carers and siblings who live together.”
Alarmingly, more than half of cohabitants falsely believe in the existence of Common Law marriage.
But the Government decided to postpone action on recent Law Commission proposals to reform cohabitation law pending research into the cost and benefits of reforms introduced in Scotland.
Lord Lester says that Britain’s more than 2m cohabiting couples and co-dependents should not be made to wait any longer. He said: “The Government’s proposed research won’t even begin until 2010 and, if cost was the issue, one has to ask why the Government specifically excluded research on cost from the Law Commission’s original brief.”
The Bill would protect the vulnerable without equating living together to marriage or civil partnership in every way.
For example, the new laws would apply only to people living in the same household for a minimum period of time in which the parties have provided a financial or other commitment to each other.
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