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Legislation
The key pieces of domestic English and Welsh legislation addressing this topic are the Marriage Act 1949, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, and the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, rather highlighting the lack of a single Act that applies to and protects cohabitants. The Civil Partnership Act 2004 has been amended by the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration) Act 2019 to include opposite sex couples. As with all legislation, we recommend that you avoid legislation.gov.uk, and instead refer to a subscription database such a Lexis or Westlaw. This will ensure that you are working with an up-to-date version.
Television and radio documentaries
You may have access to a resource called Box of Broadcasts via your college or university. This is provided by the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council and gives on demand access to many television and radio programmes going back years, for educational purposes. Some programmes also include transcripts. There are many documentaries available. These include:
Medieval Lives: Birth, Marriage, Death: Episode 2, A Good Marriage (BBC4, 2013)
The British Family: Our History: Marriage (BBC2 2010)
Forced Marriage Cops (Channel 4, 2015)
Love and Marriage: A Twentieth Century Romance (BBC4, 2012)
Rescued from a Forced Marriage (BBC News 24, 2015)
Dispatches: When Cousins Marry (Channel 4, 2010)
Should I Marry My Cousin? (BBC1, 2017)
Our World: Loving v Virginia (BBC, 2007)
The Truth about Muslim Marriages (Channel 4, 2017)
Tonight: The Great British Wedding (ITV, 2011)
ONS Statistical Bulletin, Families and Households in the UK
Trends in living arrangements including families (with and without dependent children), people living alone and people in shared accommodation, broken down by size and type of household.
ONS Statistical Bulletin, Marriage, Cohabitation and Civil Partnerships
Lots of data on marriages formed, civil partnerships formed and dissolved, and estimates of the population by marital status and living arrangements.
Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law of England, vol 1 (1765)
Extracts from Blackston’s Commentaries on effect of marriage, i.e., coverture.
Law Commission, Family Law: Solemnisation of Marriage in England and Wales (Law Com No. 53, 1971)
1971 report on the law and practice surrounding marriage, including preliminaries, place of marriage, registration, irregularities, and offences.
Law Commission, Family Law: Jurisdiction in Suits for Nullity of Marriage (1971)
Explains the law of nullity as at 1971 and makes proposals for reform.
The Government’s proposals for civil partnerships, outlining the formation, effect, and dissolution of such partnerships. Civil Partnerships were introduced by the Civil Partnership Act 2004.
Responses to the consultation: available here
Law Commission, Cohabitation Project (2011)
Consultation and report Cohabitation: The Financial Consequences of Relationship Breakdown, which proposed a divorce-style financial remedy regime for cohabitants, albeit not as generous as that applying to married couples. The government has so far failed to take any action.
There is a useful summary by one of the Commissioners, available here.
Government Equalities Office: Equal Civil Marriage: A Consultation (London, 2012)
Homepage for the consultation document and responses on same-sex marriage.
HM Government, Consultation on the Future of Civil Partnership in England and Wales (2014)
Given the introduction of same-sex marriage, the government wondered what to do about civil partnerships. This page contains their consultation, summary of responses, and conclusions to do nothing for the time being. The ‘do nothing’ approach was not accepted in R (on the application of Steinfeld and Keidan) v Secretary of State for International Development [2018] UKSC 32.
Law Commission, Weddings Project (2014-2022)
Homepage for the scoping paper on changing how and where people can lawfully marry. The government has subsequently indicated it is not prioritising this issue.
Wilkinson v Kitzinger [2006] EWHC 2022 (Fam)
Important case involving two British academics who married when living in Canada. On their return to the UK, their marriage was treated as a civil partnership. They claimed this was discriminatory.
Judicial review of government refusal to open civil partnerships to different-sex couples. Steinfeld and Keidan feel that civil partnership avoids the historical baggage of marriage.
In the Supreme Court: (this decision post-dates the Court of Appeal decision discussed in your textbook).
Steinfeld and Keidan’s campaign page