[Shaun]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

A will resolves this and should be written even if you are married (or straight and cohabiting). Insurance companies are more forward thinking than the government and will hapily pay a life insurance policy over to a gay partner if that is what the policy holder nominated. As a married couple your automatic rights to your partners estate are severely impared if you have children, to the point they could take sufficient ownership of your home that they could force you out (though unless you adopt I realise this is a bit of a technicality)

Again though these are things that are given to married couples, an option we are denied.

Yes you do, a good (or even a very average) property conveyencor would suggest you own the property as tennants in common (not joint tennants), tennents in common both own a shadow 100% of the property in event of death of a tennant, then ownership automatically is shared between the rest of the tennants.

Again cost and hassle to us that we wouldn't need to go through should we have the option of a "marriage" type contract.

I don't quite understand the point you are trying to make here. Most firms and their pension policies allow you to specify a same sex life partner ( in my companies case you must have been living together for two years). In such an example in the event of death, the company pension scheme would provide death in service benefits to the same sex life partner.

What I'm saying is that if I apply for financial support to help pay toward the cost of my degree I am unable to prove my income making it almost imposable to get any form of help because the government do not see our finances as joint.

Nothing a living will won't resolve. In reality if you have a healthy relationship with him and his parents, you would want to be including them in the decision and they would want you to be included in the decision regardless of what the law said. Similarly the NHS will pretty much overlook the law for visitor rights etc. I know if I had to make a decision to turn of Mrs H life support I would be making this decision in conjunction with her Mother and rest of family regardless of whether I had the ultimate right to overrule.

Again something we have to go out and do that is automatic to straight couples, even with a living will I don't have any rights, he would detail what he wants happening, hardly the same.

Like I said in a past post, we don't get on with his family and should something happen to him I'd have no right to organize the funeral, dispose of his belongings or his/our money.

Originally Posted by Chris T

However in this case we are dealing with something which is not going to gradually become accepted, but which would (in theory) go from being illegal one day to legal the next. This makes little allowance for the fact that attitudes can change a lot more slowly than laws do and I think goes some way towards explaining why it is only gay marriage that is causing objections.

Surely this is how it worked for non-religious marriages, the law was changed on one day and the next it wasn't illegal, I can't see the HUGE difference allured to by some.