Common Law Marriage

Common law marriage – is there such a thing?

Does common law marriage exist?  The short answer is “no”, however, almost half of people in England and Wales mistakenly believe that unmarried couples who live together have a common law marriage and enjoy the same rights as couples that are legally married.

The first findings from this year’s British Social Attitudes Survey – carried out by The National Centre for Social Research – reveal that 46% of us are under the wrong impression that cohabiting couples form a common law marriage – a figure that remains largely unchanged over the last fourteen years (47% in 2005) despite a significant increase in the number of cohabiting couples. In contrast, only 41% of respondents rightly say cohabiting couples are not in a common law marriage.

Responses to the question, commissioned by the University of Exeter and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, show that people are significantly more likely to believe in common law marriage when children come into the equation; 55% of households with children think that common law marriage exists, whilst only 41% of households without any children do so.

Cohabiting couples (48%) are just as likely as married couples to believe in common law marriage (49%). In contrast, singles were the most clued up group with only 39% saying so.

More men (49%) than women (44%) think that unmarried couples who live together are in a common law marriage. People with a religious affiliation are more likely than those without to share this view (49% vs 44%) as are those without any formal qualification (50% vs 39 % educated to degree level).

A similar knowledge gap is found between different age groups; only 28% of those aged 18 to 24 years and 39% of those aged 65 and over perceive a cohabiting couple to be in a common law marriage, whereas 52% of respondents aged between 25 and 64 years believe this to be the case.