Law Weblog

Civil partnerships

Saturday 16 April 2005 at 12:52 pm | In News | Post Comment

The Civil Partnership Act 2004, comes into force on 5 December 2005.  It will give same-sex couples many of the rights and benefits opposite-sex couples have already. Lesbian and gay couples who register as civil partners will have formal legal recognition of their relationships, and will have rights and duties to each other and to third parties and the state.
Civil partners must be:
Of the same sex,
Not in an existing civil partnership or marriage,
Old enough to marry (i.e. 18 without permission, 16 with permission),
Not ‘within the prohibited degrees of relationship’, as with marriage.

Civil partnerships will be introduced throughout the UK, and there will be a registration process, like civil marriage, and a dissolution process, similar to divorce. Civil partners will be treated like married partners for the purposes of tax, nationality and immigration, inheritance, liability for maintenance and child support, tenancies, employment and pension benefits and protection from domestic violence.

There are benefit implications, Tax credit implications, living together and benefit implications many of which have yet to be worked out.