Cohabitation Rights: what we should affirm, and why we should reject them
Dan Lilley, Head of Programme (Youth) at CSJ
“The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jubilee Centre or its trustees.”
Cohabitation rights are back on the government agenda.[1]
On 5 June 2026, the government announced a consultation on ‘overdue reforms to protect women and meet the needs of modern relationships’ as ‘over 3.5 million unmarried couples will be given more financial security’[2] under strengthened cohabitation rights.
This piece explores the appropriate Christian response, arguing that while cohabitation rights are seeking to correct genuine injustices, they do so in an incoherent and damaging way and are ultimately a policy we should oppose. It then turns its attention to what should be done instead, both upstream and downstream of issues of desertion, abuse, and bereavement.
A rapid overview
A cohabiting couple is one that lives together but is not married. There is no such thing in British law as common law marriage; you have minimal protections for relationship dissolution as a cohabiting couple.
It has become far more common. Cohabiting before marriage became a majority behaviour nationally in about 1983,[3] and now 91 per cent of non-religious and 80 per cent of religious couples that marry cohabit before marrying.[4] The proportion of children born to cohabiting couples has risen from 10 per cent in 1986 to 34 per cent today.[5] Roughly (although new data is lacking) half of cohabiting couples eventually marry and half eventually separate,[6] and research consistently finds that cohabiting relationships separate at roughly three times the rate of married couples.[7]
Cohabitation rights are seeking to correct a genuine injustice
Cohabitation rights are normally defended on three grounds. First, it is unjust to desert a financially dependent partner without support to protect them from financial ruin. Second, that it is unjust for someone leaving an abusive partner to face destitution for doing so. And third, that it is unjust to receive no support if a codependent partner dies.
Correct. These are all indeed unjust. Protection of the widow and fatherless is a clear recurring theme throughout the Bible (Deuteronomy 10:18, 24:17-21, Isaiah 1:17, Zechariah 7:10 – by no means exhaustive). And mistreatment of widows and orphans is taken extremely seriously (Exodus 22:22-24, Malachi 3:5 particularly clear).
Our hearts should break for these circumstances. We should seek justice where we find injustice.
Cohabitation rights are incoherent
But we must understand why these things are unjust, and when we do it is clear why cohabitation rights are such a bad remedy.
These are unjust because they are a failure to honour what the relationship required. Because in the covenant of marriage where ‘a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’ three things are true. The man leaves; they form a new distinct, public household. They hold fast (dābaq) or cleave: permanent covenant faithfulness (see Psalm 63:8 or Deuteronomy 10:20). And they become one flesh – their lives are merged into a single, fully-shared existence.
Jesus reaffirms this in Matthew 19:6, and Ephesians 5:28-29 expounds oneness further, that husbands are to love their wives “as their own bodies”.
That is why these things are unjust. When a couple has publicly committed to permanent oneness, then the situations outlined violate the union. Deserting a dependent partner egregiously violates both permanence and oneness; abuse is indefensible; and the public nature demands a right to inherit that others should respect.
Both halves are essential: because they have joined in this way, therefore they should not end in these ways.
Cohabitation rights are incoherent because they make two conflicting moral claims.
That, if a couple has chosen to fully share their lives together, it is wrong for there to be low exit costs on dissolution. In other words, that the state should interfere to protect against unjust dissolution, and
That, if a couple has chosen to fully share their lives together, it is wrong to expect those couples to commit to staying together (marry) and thus commit to high exit costs on dissolution. In other words, the state should not interfere to protect against unjust dissolution.
Both must be true for cohabitation rights. If only the latter is true, the state leaves you alone. And should not interfere when you form or separate, as it’s your business. If only the former is true, the state should at the very least affirm the goodness of marriage.
But they are also contradictory. One seeks to force upon couples a relationship they have not chosen for the sake of a moral position – it is, in a sense, more hardline on cohabitation than most Christians: inflicting upon couples a relationship they do not necessarily want. The other seeks complete moral ambivalence: your relationship is your own, do as you please. One says it is the state’s business, one says it is not.
As an important aside, there is also a bigger oddity here as the state has been preoccupied in recent years with lowering the exit costs of marriage, through strengthening pre-nuptial rights and introducing no-fault divorce. Informal relationship rights are being bolstered while formal relationship (marriage) rights weakened. In this context, the policy seems to be less based on the principles of commitment and protection of the vulnerable, and more so on a specific attack on the institution of marriage.
Cohabitation rights are damaging
As well as the logic being spurious, the consequence is disastrous. Finland – which introduced cohabitation rights – is instructive here, where marriage rates have been lowered by some 23 per cent, also contributing substantially to a large fall in the birth rate.[8]
But we can understand logically why it is disastrous. Cohabitation rights undermine marriage by saying that it is inessential, and indeed by seeking to make it inessential. The consequence is a major incentive to marry is removed, and the benefits of marriage drift further away. Ultimately, as the prevalence of cohabitation increases, there are more unstable relationships and there is more relationship breakdown. The very thing that the cohabitation rights law seeks to protect against, it fuels.
As Michael Schluter outlined in Family in the Jubilee Manifesto, there is a broader lesson to draw here: family policy is irreducibly normative.[9] Every ‘neutral’ technical fix has a norm. Family policy always pushes choices and behaviours in a certain direction. In doing so, reflecting a moral value around what people should do in their family life.
This policy reflects two contradictory values: that commitment is not essential, and that desertion is wrong. It does this because all family policy rests on the foundations of normative questions. We do or do not have obligations to those we are related to or partnered with. Dependency does or does not create obligations. Desertion is or is not wrong, and the circumstances need clarifying. You cannot do family policy without engaging fully with imperatives.
What should be done instead?
It is all well explaining why the policy is wrong, but it does not solve the injustices. The three cases – desertion, entrapment in abusive relationships, and failure to protect the widow and orphan – are serious and sit in the domain of public policy. We need policies that address them, both upstream and downstream.
Upstream, the single best protection for all these things is marriage, and increasing the proportion who choose to marry freely addresses the problem at its source: marriage protects against desertion, far reduces the risk of domestic abuse,[10] and has built-in protections for the bereaved.
Here there are two family policy genres, really. Cash and culture. Making marriage a more appealing financial decision and increasing how highly it is socially valued.
Within cash, there are three policy measures. The first two are around reducing the cost of weddings. Weddings are extortionate, and although popular estimates of averaging weddings costing £20,000 or more are untrustworthy, they have more than a kernel of truth to them.[11]
First, government must find parliamentary time for the Law Commission proposals to reorganise wedding regulation around the officiant not the building that the government has already endorsed. Organising regulation around the building creates a large barrier to entry in hosting weddings, massively driving up the single biggest cost – the venue.
Second, grants for poorer couples marrying – as the Centre for Social Justice has called for – can address prohibitive wedding costs at the lower end of the income spectrum.[12]
Third is household taxation. Married couples are treated as two individuals rather than one family for tax purposes, which penalises all couples with an uneven income distribution between them. Household taxation – like Germany’s ehegattensplitten – would alleviate this, removing an unfair punishment on single earner households and providing a marriage-specific tax benefit.
Within culture there are almost infinite policies, from PSHE reform to politicians saying nice things to celebrity weddings. They’re intangible and on the fringes of the domain of government, instead starting in churches, families, and civil society. Most immediately, the church must reaffirm the imperative of marriage as opposed to cohabitation (perhaps through waiving the £550 Church of England wedding fee), and the government must stop suggesting marriage is irrelevant or outdated.
Downstream, the striking thing about these injustices is that they don’t require new legislation. They need fixing, yes, but not through cohabitation rights.
Deserted parents are already owed maintenance. The issue here is collection instead of entitlement – the Child Maintenance service is what needs sorting. Someone fleeing abuse is already entitled to occupation and non-molestation orders. The primary issue is the means to leave, substantially due to Universal Credit being paid to a single account in cases of unmarried couples. These should be separate for unmarried cohabitants. Bereaved cohabitants can already claim provision from the estate. Inheritance Tax deferral, if introduced, would be a narrow bereaved partner protection policy through a Finance Act, not spousal status.
In all these things, the issue is that the existing machinery does not work well. A new legal status will not fix anything because the problems are administrative. They just need to function better.
Cohabitation rights do seek to fight genuine injustice. We should affirm that. But they get it deeply wrong. There is a much better way, make the existing protections for desertion, abuse, and bereavement actually work, and rebuild the single best protection: marriage.
References:
[1] Although one should note that in the weeks since the Secretary of State for Justice and Prime Minister have both changed.
[2] Ministry of Justice (2026) Press release: Millions of unmarried couples to get stronger rights. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-of-unmarried-couples-to-get-stronger-rights. Accessed: 24 July 2026.
[3] Hayward, J. and Brandon, G. (2011) Cohabitation: An alternative to marriage? Jubilee Centre. Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62012941199c974967f9c4ad/t/6409ea160f10d95b65097eba/1678371353302/Cohabitation+An+Alternative+to+Marriage+%282011%29.pdf (Accessed: 24 July 2026).
[4] Centre for Social Justice (2026) I do? Available at: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/i-do-marriage (Accessed: 24 July 2026).
[5] Office for National Statistics (2025) Births in England and Wales: 2024 (refreshed populations). Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/birthsinenglandandwalesbirthregistrations
[6] Hayward, J. and Brandon, G. (2011) Cohabitation: An alternative to marriage? Jubilee Centre. Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62012941199c974967f9c4ad/t/6409ea160f10d95b65097eba/1678371353302/Cohabitation+An+Alternative+to+Marriage+%282011%29.pdf (Accessed: 24 July 2026).
[7] Harry Benson’s PhD thesis, which the Centre for Social Justice have published a shortened version of, is excellent on this: Centre for Social Justice (2026) The stability advantage. Available at: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/the-stability-advantage (Accessed: 24 July 2026). Otherwise, a write up of my top ten preferred sources for this fact can be found in section 3.4, page 10 of this report: Centre for Social Justice (2026) I do? Available at: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/i-do-marriage (Accessed: 24 July 2026).
[8] Centre for Social Justice (2026) Finnishing Marriage? Available at: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/finnishing-marriage (Accessed: 13 August 2026).
[9] Schluter, M. and Ashcroft, J. (eds.) (2005) Jubilee Manifesto: A Framework, Agenda and Strategy for Christian Social Reform. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press.
[10] Domestic abuse rates in married couples are half that of cohabiting couples are far lower than for single individuals. Commitment is hugely protective against domestic abuse and transience a major risk factor. See page 12 of this report: Centre for Social Justice (2026) I do? Available at: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/i-do-marriage (Accessed: 24 July 2026).
[11] Lilley, D. (2024) Marriage and the stable society. Civitas. Available at: https://www.civitas.org.uk/publications/marriage-and-the-stable-society/ (Accessed: 13 August 2026). See Chapter 4.
[12] Centre for Social Justice (2024) Lonely nation: Part one.
