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Family Law Cohabitation Conference
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The below article appears in the January issue of Family Law at [2017] Fam Law 114 and has been made available free of charge as a service to our readers.
In his introductory remarks to the Family Law Cohabitation Conference held in London in November 2016 John Wilson QC promised a ‘high protein’ day of seminars with ‘a lot of bang for your buck’. John reminded the delegates that cohabitees had been passed over by the coalition government in 2014 when it rejected the Law Commission’s recommendation of changes to existing statutes governing administration of estates and intestacy in the form of the Inheritance (Cohabitants) Bill. The legislation would have provided for ‘qualifying cohabitants’ to inherit property if certain conditions were met including either cohabitation for 2 years ‘as the intestate’s spouse or civil partner’ if the cohabitees had had children or for 5 years if not. Parliament had settled for the minor amendments introduced by the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Act 2014 thus consigning the cohabitee of a person who had died intestate to the more circumscribed provisions of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act...
Read the full article here.
