Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Debate between Victoria Prentis and Kevin Foster

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I could not have put it better myself. This is about new rights, new choices and new abilities for people, to reflect the different lifestyles and relationships of today.

The Bill will also help to deal with the idea of the common law spouse. Too many people think that they have some sort of status as a common law husband or wife, right up until the point when tragic circumstances occur and they suddenly discover that they have virtually no status at all. In fact, they have the same status as a mate they know down the pub. That is when things start to go wrong, but the Bill should help to reduce the number of such occurrences.

[Victoria Prentis]

I cannot emphasise enough how critical it is that we get the message out that there is no such thing as a common law spouse and that it confers no rights at all. What more does my hon. Friend think we can do to get that message across? This is what I was referring to, slightly facetiously, when I said that deals are better than no deals.

[Kevin Foster]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we need to get the message out there. Ironically, people think that it is somehow easier to be a common law wife or husband, when it is actually easier to be viewed as married in a religious sense than it is in the legal sense.

There is a story that I will not go into in too much because it involves the last week of my mother’s life, and there are difficult memories, but I will mention it briefly. My mum was in a hospice, and a little blessing service was held, at which Hazel and I were present. It was referred to in some of the coverage that our engagement ring was my mother’s ring, which she gave to Hazel that day. Had the priest run through the vows there that day, Hazel and I would have been a married couple in the Christian religious sense. Under the law, the marriage would not have had any legal status because we would not have complied with the terms of the Marriage Act 1949; we would not have posted banns, given notice or obtained a special licence. However, in a Christian sense, we would have been a married couple, had she run through the vows that day. People forget that it is easier to be viewed as married in a religious sense than it is in a legal sense. And, as my hon. Friend says, there is no such thing as a common law wife or husband in the legal sense.