I was listening to Will Young being interviewed on the BBC this week about his soon to be released CD. He was talking about how 95% of all songs are about love and of that 95%, the same percentage are about broken relationships. Such events can consume us and it can be impossible to have a clear head and make the right decisions when hearts are broken and reason is clouded. This state of uproar and confusion can produce some wonderful, heart-rending music (and terrible poetry) but for the non song writers among us, it often produces little more than chaos.
A good case in point is one I'm dealing with at the moment. The gentleman concerned has recently ended his eight year old relationship with his partner, with whom he has three children. The house is in his name and he thought it would be a simple matter for he and his ex-partner to split possessions and so on, make suitable contact arrangements for the children and, in effect, move on with their lives.
Not so. His ex partner has gone to court to get an Emergency Occupation Order under the Family Law Act that will allow her to go on living in the house, and what's more, she can continue to do so until the courts determine what her financial claim, if any, is in the property.
British people must stop thinking of prenups as being unromantic - they're not, they're just good sense and what's more, you don't have to be getting married to have one drawn up. A living together agreement protects you in just the sort of situation that I have outlined above. The law in relation to cohabitation is complicated; one of the biggest myths many people believe in is that couples who live together become "common law" husband and wife, but there is no such legal status and no concomitant rights.
In tandem with living together agreements, I would also advise anyone about to share a property with someone to make a will because if you haven't and are unmarried, your estate will pass to your closest blood relative - not the love of your life with whom you've shared a home for say, 30 years. Unlike married couples, partners aren't entitled to inherit from each other, something many couples living together either forget or more commonly aren't aware of.
The flip side of this situation is the possibility that someone with whom you've shared a home then broken up with might be able to get their hands on some of your equity, as my client is now finding out to his cost. Even if your partner is not named on the legal title they may still, potentially, be able to make a claim against the equity by virtue of your cohabitation.
Americans draw up prenups all the time and are way ahead of us with living together agreements too. Perhaps this is because unlike we buttoned-up Brits, Americans are far more open about their feelings. As a result, they have no problem with detailing the specifics of their expectations. "My wife will never gain more than 15lbs and if she gets pregnant, will lose all her baby weight within eight weeks" and "my husband will play golf no more than twice a week and never on a Saturday" are two clauses I've drawn up in the past for American clients and why not, I say. If that's your personality then the person marrying you should know what they're letting themselves in for, frankly.
And unlike marriage, there's nothing to stop you drawing up an agreement if you're already living together - an agreement can still be entered into. Yet we British people still look the other way, determined to believe in love ever after and refusing to countenance the thought of a relationship ever breaking down. You might think I'm unromantic. I'm not - I'm a realist.