Chapter 1 Key facts checklists

Family relationships, marriage, civil partnership, cohabitation

Many attempts have been made to define ‘a family’ but the range of couples and larger groups, with or without children, who may be included or excluded, makes it difficult to find a widely acceptable definition.
Marriage was defined in Hyde v Hyde (1866) as ‘the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others’.
The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 allowed couples of the same sex to marry.
A civil partnership was originally a relationship between two people of the same sex formed when they registered as civil partners of each other under the Civil Partnership Act 2004. Following the decision in R (on the application of Steinfeld and Keidan) (Appellants) v Secretary of State for International Development (in substitution for the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary) (Respondent) (2018), civil partnerships were extended to opposite sex couples.
There is no such thing as a ‘common law marriage’ and those living together acquire virtually no rights in relation to each other, regardless of the length of their cohabitation.
Formalities have to be complied with both to form and to end marriage and civil partnership; no formalities govern the start and end of cohabitation.
Parties to a marriage or civil partnership can acquire rights over property during the relationship by their contributions, other than money, towards the relationship.
Cohabitees generally only acquire rights over things to which they contribute financially. They may be able to claim rights over property on the basis of trusts law or proprietary estoppel.
There are often calls to reform the law in relation to cohabitants. Joint ownership of property is an issue of particular concern.