Our thanks to Stu for this. An extract:
Mother-of-five Yvonne, who was with her ex-partner 17 years, said she was “shocked to find out” her legal rights when they ended the relationship.
“I was entitled to nothing,” she said.
“I was no longer just dealing with a break-up – but with the fallout of not being legally entitled to share in any of what I thought were our joint assets.”
It is incredible that she hadn’t checked out her legal rights before having children, and difficult to have much sympathy as a result. The same goes for the equalisation of the age at which men and women receive the state pension. Women are whining because they will have equality… but totally the wrong sort of equality. We turn to WASPI, Women Against State Pension Inequality [J4MB emphasis]. An extract from their website’s home page:
The 1995 Conservative Government’s Pension Act included plans to increase women’s SPA (State Pension Age) to 65, the same as men’s. WASPI agrees with equalisation, but does not agree with the unfair way the changes were implemented – with little or no personal notice [J4MB emphasis] (1995/2011 Pension Acts), faster than promised (2011 Pension Act), and no time to make alternative plans. Retirement plans have been shattered with devastating consequences. We started the campaign with just five ordinary women who in 2015 got together and decided to fight this injustice.
I fully expect these women’s campaign to be successful. Because heaven forbid that women ever lose their gender privileges.
Justice for Men & Boys 
A rare case where British governments have indeed introduced some form of sex equality. Are women still entitles to a Widow’s Pension? A “Widower’s Pension” certainly never existed.
LikeLike
Actually the Widows pension was changed in 2001 to include men “widowed Parents allowance” (for either sex though of course usually the mother as it is tied to having dependent children) and there are “Bereavement” payments and allowances. All part of the fiendishly complex benefits system.
LikeLike
My view is that women’s pensions should be payable five years later than men’s to take account of the ‘life entitlement gap’.
My interest here is to promote and advance equality you understand.
LikeLike
Agreed. We made the same point in our 2015 general election manifesto.
LikeLike
I agree with you, especially as equality of outcome is now the desired norm.
LikeLike
Yes I’ve noticed the general gynocentric drift of the recent upswing in interest in reform of the divorce laws. Having two forms of “marriage” already ( marriage and civil partnership, the latter set to include heterosexual couples) it seems pretty superfluous to add a third by making “common law” marriage a reality. It is high time we treated people as adults and presumed they know why they make the choices they do.
LikeLike
‘Retirement plans have been shattered with devastating consequences.‘
The ‘devastating consequence’ being that women are now entitled to the historical male privilege of working until 65 (actually now at least 66 – for me and many other men, and 67, I believe, for those born later, such as my wife).
LikeLike
I find it very odd that WASPI claim little or no notice.
I knew as far about as the mid 90s.( 1995)
the actuaries for my pension( local authority) has stated that equalisation was coming in from the EU in order to balance the inequality of pension age.
so… by the pension act of 2011 .. that’s about 16 years.. more than enough notice.
LikeLike
As a rule women take less interest than men in their pensions provision, and make less provision. They expect the state (funded by taxpayers, mostly men) to take care of them. So when something unpleasant / unexpected falls out of a clear blue sky, they claim ignorance, without admitting it was wilful ignorance.
LikeLike
Common law makes a long-term partner virtually equal to a spouse in the disposition of assets, so long as both have been earning and paying the bills which both have used. There is no statute law on the subject so the main complication is that it is necessary to go to court with well-documented evidence of living as a couple (rather than, for example, as room-mates).
For the primary earner and property owner (typically men), cohabiting has the advantage of protecting their interest in the property quite well, though if the property is the only asset upon separation, a court might still determine that the partner is due something and demand settlement.
For men, having children while cohabiting is dangerous. Women have the automatic right to the children the two have but men have NO right at all. Men have the responsibility to pay for up to 100% of the calculated child rearing costs, however. This amount they can be made to pay has nothing to do with the cost of raising a child but is a direct charge on the amount of money they earn (or assets they own, if large enough, such as half a house), so the wealthier a man is, the more will be taken from him and given to the mother (without any legal requirement that she uses the money for the children). Getting married AFTER the child was born does not give the father any more rights but can make his position worse.
Only if the child is born after 1 December 2003 in England or Wales, and the father himself personally Registered the birth of the child and included both himself as father and the mother on the certificate, will he (usually) have default joint parental authority regardless of his marital status. A father’s status can be taken away from him by the Family Courts, as often happens by the mother making an unproven claim of abuse.
One aspect of cohabiting that is always divergent from marriage is when one partner dies. If there is no will, a spouse pretty-much automatically inherits (and can inherit even if the will is otherwise) but a live-in-partner has no rights upon death to their partner’s property unless there is a will making it so. With no will and no marriage, the assets go to the next of kin, or if no kin can be found, they go into the public purse.
LikeLike