Unmarried Rights

Wheezy_2

ninky wrote: »

and most men would give it up for a bj (a good one).

ILW wrote: »

I would....

Yes, that was a somewhat redundant statement, ninky :A

Andy_L

paddedjohn wrote: »

I'd wager a guinea she was without a chaperone. The country is going to the dogs, they will be wanting the vote next if we're not careful.:rotfl:

Women! Know your place;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfu0aV1dkHw

LydiaJ

LydiaJ wrote: »

Because caring for our children makes a serious dent in my earning capacity and didn't affect his. I certainly wouldn't have expected or wanted any spousal maintenance otherwise.

He was only going to pay any significant amount of spousal maintenance until the youngest was 12, after which I was supposed to be able to increase to longer hours without getting clobbered by massive childcare fees.

ILW wrote: »

Surely that is a choice you decided to make.

lostinrates wrote: »

A choice maybe both of them decided to make?

Yes, thanks lir, it was a joint decision. We agreed that we were both happy for them to spend some time in childcare but neither of us wanted them in childcare full time.

At the time we were negotiating these things, he was working full time. I was working part time (65% FTE) and still having to pay loads in after school club fees for three days a week (and a before school childminder) to enable me to work.

He was earning bucketloads in management. I was earning a lot less in teaching, partly because that's my career but partly because we both wanted me to have school holidays at home with our kids. My second job could have been all year round, but we agreed I would take a pay cut to work term time only for that reason.

He certainly didn't want any responsibility for taking time off during school holidays to look after them, or paying for childcare in school holidays either. He had them for some evenings and weekends, five days in the summer, and a couple of days at Christmas. All the rest of it was my responsibility: six weeks in the summer, two weeks each at Christmas and Easter, and a week of half term three times a year. It was only after quite a lot of persuasion that he agreed to have them for the May bank holiday (when I have to work and he didn't) as an extra rather than instead of the Saturday of that weekend.

Child maintenance is supposed to pay for the children's needs - food, clothes, shoes, school trips etc. It is not designed to pay for childcare to enable the resident parent to work. Without spousal maintenance, the non-resident parent is free to work full time, while the resident parent can either work fewer hours, or else fork out shedloads of cash for childcare in order to work full time. Spousal maintenance is a way of correcting this imbalance. You can think of is as the non-resident parent paying the resident parent for doing more than their fair share of the childcare, if that makes more sense to you.

For example, he frequently had them on a Tuesday night. He had to be at work a lot earlier than they had to be at school, so they went to a childminder on Wednesday mornings. He delivered them to her, but I paid for her. Does that seem fair to you, if there's no adjustment for that in the maintenance amount?

ETA If you are new to this board and don't know my story, you may wonder why I refer to myself in the present tense and him in the past tense. It's because he's dead.

jackieblack

ninky wrote: »

and most men would give it up for a bj (a good one).

probably even just an 'ok' one

zcrat41

"When the partner with something to lose declines to make a commitment, it's up to the other partner to give them the ultimatum:- either s**t or get off the pot.

Again, the courts have no business turning cohabiting into a similar legal commitment to marriage. The fact that some people lose out because their partners won't marry them, and they too weak to break away and look elsewhere, is not a problem that should be shifted onto the rest of us with bad laws."

Hear Hear.

I wouldn't move into my other half's until I had a ring on my finger.

It worked.

It was to protect myself and my assets and him and his assets until we were both ready to make that commitment. I'd have preferred to have waited until after we were married but I compromised.

I think marriage is a great way to bring up a family and should be encouraged.

I know there are situations where things break up and fall down and divorce happens and I may have a different opinion in 20 yrs!!!

justme111

ninky wrote: »

but presumably you are happy to have sex with her, let her clean the home, wash clothes and generally enrich your life? whilst she is with you she is also prevented from meeting and marrying a richer person who might provide her with more. if you are really worried about it i suggest you only have cohabiting relationships with people of a similar earning level and asset ownership as yourself.

That imply she is not happy to have sex with him and he doesn't enrich her life. So a richer person is "to provide" to her in exchange for sex and dishwashing? Wow, thats shoking!:D

justme111

It may be too personal : everyone makes choices. As a result of choices ( including earning bucketloads of money) he made he is not alive now. While you are and can enjoy the children.

Brallaqueen

I hope this doesn't catch on. If you want the rights and benefits- marriage or civil partnership is freely available in the UK to all orientations. If you both do not agree on this (or any other) very important issue then the relationship is doomed anyway!


(I guess I'm in a position of privilege in that I do not have to rely on someone else to house me)

Degenerate

lostinrates wrote: »

A choice maybe both of them decided to make?

In Lydia's case this choice was formalised by agreement with the legal protection of a marriage. They also had children which is a very serious legal responsibilty in itself. We've gone way off the subject, this has little to do with "cohabitee rights".

ninky wrote: »

if you are really worried about it i suggest you only have cohabiting relationships with people of a similar earning level and asset ownership as yourself.

Or how about the Government butt out of people's personal arrangements unless they have children or CHOOSE to enter a marriage.

LydiaJ

justme111 wrote: »

It may be too personal : everyone makes choices. As a result of choices ( including earning bucketloads of money) he made he is not alive now. While you are and can enjoy the children.

Err.. what has his death got to do with the financial arrangements that we made when he was still alive?

You have said you disagree on principle with the idea of spousal maintenance. My view is different. I think that if parents are no longer together, then being the "parent with care" involves a significant financial loss (whether of childcare expenses or loss of earnings or both - at least it does if the kids are young enough not to be left to look after themselves while the parent is working). I think that the non-resident parent should help towards this as well as helping towards the children's own expenses by contributing child maintenance.

I have held this view since before he died, and I still hold it now. Nothing's changed about that as a result of his death. When he was alive he held that view too - hence his willingness to pay spousal maintenance until our youngest was 12 but no longer. I'm happy to agree to disagree with you, but this is a debate forum, so I've been debating. No hard feelings!

TBH I've never had any reason to develop a particular view as to whether it should apply to cohabitees as well as married people. I only got involved in this discussion because somebody said that cohabitees were entitled to the same maintenance as divorcees and I was putting in a bit of factual information to say that that's not accurate.

It's not that personal, I'm not upset, and his death had absolutely nothing to do with his choice of career or his earning capacity. He was killed while travelling to his mother's for her birthday weekend, by a driver coming the other way who was on the wrong side of the road. That's equally likely to happen to any of us who ever travel in cars and/or visit our parents, so it's hardly meaningful to say it was a result of his choices.