Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

Baroness Deech Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, this Bill would impose a far-reaching legal regime on millions of adults who have expressly chosen not to marry or enter a civil partnership. The fact that some may think they have rights is no justification for taking away the liberty of others. Some may not know the law but a majority do, and we should respect the majority who have acted consciously, not those who will say they did not know there were no rights.

Article 8 of the human rights convention protects the right to private and family life, which will be attacked by the Bill. Some of the comments that the public have made are interesting. They say in response to my article:

“I thought that forced marriages were illegal”


and

“more of the authoritarian state”.

The scheme is gravely lacking certainty and predictability. Litigation will flourish and costs escalate. There will be blackmail to settle, coercion and fear. Knowledge of a three-year time limit will lead many to walk out, as they have said, before three years is up. Retrospectivity is contrary to the rule of law. What amounts to cohabitation? There will be investigation of sexual, domestic and financial scenarios—the exposure of which should be private and informal.

The inheritance rights proposed here would bring more trouble. Why should a surviving cohabitant, not named in any will, take priority over the children of a previous relationship, creating immediate conflict and unfairness? In fact, cohabitants already have rights under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975.

I want to examine the much-used words “protection” and “vulnerability”. Those words are brandished to appeal to our emotions and to drive this issue forward. For a woman, typically, the protection she might need at the end of a cohabitation is definitely not the possibility of embarking on litigation with a former partner, without legal aid, designed to extract from him a meagre amount, most of which will be taken up in costs, for cohabitants tend to be less well off than married couples.

The litigation will take a long time. The lead judge of the London Financial Remedies Court has calculated that there would be an extra 10,000 case applications a year, while sitting days are being cut and 88,000 cases are waiting. It would be litigation fraught with definition problems of the sort that appeal to lawyers.

Have noble Lords noticed that it is in fact only the lawyers who support this legislation? The public do not. The majority of the comments on my article in the Guardian on this issue reject the proposed law. “If you want marriage rights,” they said, “get married. Keep the Government out”. The consultees to the Law Commission said the same in 2007.

Who is really vulnerable? The children are, and there is nothing here to help them, and the Government have not reformed the maintenance law. Equally vulnerable are single women who may be saddled with childcare and lower pay, and the woman who has cared for her elderly parents for years but is not entitled to anything from them, and the sisters who live together but are disregarded by the law. I wonder why it is that only a sexual relationship brings women within the purview of a law to benefit them. I can find no good answer.

Cohabiting couples can choose to marry, enter a civil partnership, make a will, sign an agreement, insure each other’s lives, become joint tenants and gain property by contributing to the improvement of the other one’s property. That respects autonomy; this Bill does not. It intrudes into private life, it makes for uncertainty and expense and it opens up new avenues of judicial discretion and lots of lucrative litigation. If there is a problem with Muslim unrecognised marriages, that needs to be solved elsewhere.

The Bill is well intentioned but profoundly misguided. It is illiberal, intrusive and a bedroom tax—“share your bedroom and you will pay for it for evermore”. Noble Lords should protect freedom to choose one’s lifestyle and freedom of contract over deprivation of rights. It is your relationship and your choice.