​Cohabitation law reform

In a recent speech the senior family judge Sir James Munby informed an audience of colleagues that cohabitation reform was ‘desperately needed’. He lamented the courts’ inability to redistribute the assets of cohabitants on separation.

Sir James of course was doing no more than express what has become the orthodoxy among family lawyers. The case for change is straightforward. Cohabitants are in a quasi matrimonial relationship and contribute to it (or are deemed to contribute to it) accordingly. When they separate it is probable that one of the parties will find themselves in a less advantageous position than the other. It is for the courts to right this wrong which they can do only via the kind of wide ranging discretionary powers they exercise in matrimonial cases.

These arguments received their most coherent expression in the proposals of the Law Commission published in July 2007. The Commission did not consider that...

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