The Government’s plan to make marriage pointless
Marriage is the freely chosen, public, lifelong union of one man and one woman, and the gold standard for couples and the children they raise. The Government has just opened a consultation that would quietly dismantle its place in law. Blandly titled “A fairer end to relationships”, it would automatically hand the legal benefits of marriage to couples who never married – unless they opt out – and, when one partner dies, give the other the same inheritance rights as a husband or wife.
Ministers insist they are protecting marriage. The consultation even lists “Preserving the distinct status of marriage” among its guiding principles. Yet, in the very same document the Government says it is “minded” to give long-term cohabiting couples inheritance rights identical to a spouse’s – the same share and the same priority – having weighed a narrower option and rejected it for full equivalence.
When the Government promises that none of this will weaken marriage, that assurance rests on a single footnote – number 29 – with two sources which are not neutral on the reform. One was co-authored by an advocate of changing the law, who says reform “should be a priority for government”.
The other, from 2023, openly welcomes the reform, asking only what the change “might look like”. It argues that there is no evidence that similar reforms have reduced marriage rates elsewhere. However, the real danger is that the law removes the incentive to marry at all, by handing its rewards to those who chose not to make the promise.
The reform is sold as easing the burden on families. The Government’s own impact assessment says otherwise: it scores the cohabitation changes as a net cost of around £39 million over ten years and assumes some 6,700 new cohabitation court cases a year. A measure sold as sparing families the courtroom, is budgeted to fill it.
Ministers call this proposal their manifesto promise. But the manifesto pledged only to “strengthen the rights and protections available to women in co-habiting couples”, as part of tackling violence against women and girls. It did not promise to rewrite inheritance for every unmarried couple in the land.
This matters most for children. By the age of five, 15 per cent of children of married parents have seen them separate, against 53 per cent of children of cohabiting parents. Marriage is the most stable home in which to raise a child, and a reform that disincentivizes it does children no favours.
No one should make light of the hardship a cohabiting partner can face when a relationship ends or a loved one dies. Those situations are real and painful. But the answer is not to erase the line between marriage and cohabitation. It is to tell people the truth, encourage marriage, and remind anyone who wishes to provide for a partner that they can do so today by making a will. You do not uphold marriage by building its replacement.
This consultation closes at 11.59pm on 14 August 2026. Please respond, and do not let the Government count on your silence. I have prepared a short guide to the questions that matter most and how to put the case in your own words.
Our guide can be found here, and you can respond to the consultation here.
The Family Education Trust has also published new polling on these reforms, and found that eight in ten people believe they would lead to fewer marriages. You can read its analysis here.