Civil Partnerships Consultation: Make Your Views Heard
19th July 2003
I fear that with so much else going on, we may not have circulated as much information as we should have on the government’s proposals for Civil Partnership for same-sex couples. (There is a formal government consultattion underway, details below).
The proposals would allow same-sex couples to register their partnership, to gain legal recognition of their relationship and secure rights in a whole range of areas.
There are two groups of trans people who should be particularly interested in this:
- Those who identify as gay or lesbian, whether or not you are currently in a relationship
- Those who are currently married to someone of the opposite birth-sex, such as those who remain in a relationship with someone who they married before transition (not everyone in such a relationship necessarily identifies as gay or lesbian)
It is particularly important for the second group (married trans people and their familes) to think about this one, and to consider the proposals — because I know that some people in that situation have not considered this one so far, and it MAY become very important to you.
As you know, the draft Gender Recognition Bill proposes that marriages must be dissolved before gender recognition can be completed. We want that requirement to be removed — we don’t believe that a marriage should have to be dissolved if both spouses want to continue.
However, IF we don’t succeed in winning that argument about preserving marriages, then civil partnerships will be the ONLY way of retaining legal protection for your families unless you decide not to re-register your gender.
In saying this, I’m not suggesting that people should abandon hope of retaining their marriages. What I’m suggesting is that you should look carefully at the deal that might be available IF we don’t win, and think carefully about how it might work for you.
You may want to think of it as a sort of safety-net, or insurance policy. NOW is the time when YOU can help shape the civil partnerships law.
Whatever you decide to do IF we don’t win the right to for people to keep their marriages, then it would make a lot of difference to your options if the civil partnerships law is a good one.
I’d particularly recommend two web resources.
- Stonewall has an excellent section on its website devoted to civil partnerships
- The full text of the government’s consulation paper is available on the DTI website. (The consultation closes on 30th September 2003)
For a discussion of the issues, I have included below a recent article from last weekend’s Independent, kindly forwarded to me by a PFC campaigner. It looks at some of the unresolved details of the civil partnerships proposals — there is clearly a lot of work still to be done to sort out some crucial areas.
I don’t think that it will be realistically possible at this point for PFC to become actively involved in most aspects of that consultation, unless people can identify issues in the proposals which specifically affect trans people. It seems much more sensible to avoid a duplication of effort, and for those concerned to work with Stonewall and other GLB groups to ensure that the civil partnerships deal is as good as possible.
IF (and I stress the big IF) we don’t don’t win the argument on preserving mariages, then PFC will obviously have to work hard to ensure that there was a smooth route from marriage into civil partnership for those who change their birth certificates. We are currently looking at how this could be done, but the details of that process will have to wait to until later in the summer — it should not be complicated, and there will plenty of time to prepare a PFC response on that point to that civil partnerships consultation AFTER completing our response to the Gender Recognition Bill.
In the meantime, the important question for those currently married is to focus on how good a deal the proposed Civil Partnerships really are. There are a lot of details to consider — please do take time to consider them all.
Hope this helps!
The IndependentPitfalls lurk in plan to give gay couples inheritance rightsBy Faith Glasgow05 July 2003Imagine the situation: after spending your entire working life with the same employer, you are looking forward to an enjoyable retirement on a decent pension, only to be diagnosed with cancer, a couple of years after leaving work. The prognosis is gloomy, and you realise it is time to make sure your partner of 30 years will be properly provided for. But you are shocked to discover that under the terms of your public-sector pension, your partner will receive not a bean from your pension when you die. Worse, inheritance tax (IHT) liabilities on your estate could force your partner to sell the house where you have lived together for 27 years. This is a true scenario. Chris Morgan, a financial adviser with Compass IFA, came up with an equity release-scheme to provide the surviving partner with money to pay the tax bill, without dipping into the joint investments forming the basis of the partner’s income. Mr Morgan says: “It’s a solution which paid the Treasury’s bill, but which should never have been forced upon my client.” Indeed, if they had been a heterosexual married couple, these problems would never arise: the surviving partner would be entitled to the spouse’s pension benefits, and would be fully exempted from inheritance tax. But Mr Morgan’s clients were gay, and as the law stands, same-sex couples are tragically disadvantaged in these and many other respects because their relationship is not legally recognised. This week’s proposals from the government for a civil partnership scheme, conferring “a comprehensive range of rights and responsibilities” on same-sex couples who register their relationship, have been warmly welcomed by the gay community as a major landmark. “Every day, people continue to wait for fair treatment over pensions, inheritance tax and treatment of next of kin is a day that people face personal tragedy,” Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay campaigning group Stonewall says. “These proposals will put that unfairness right.” Stuart Smith works at the online bank Intelligent Finance in Edinburgh and shares a mortgage with his partner of four and a half years, Andrew Gregory. For Mr Smith, the proposals offer the prospect of a more secure future together. “We’re about as solid a couple as you’ll find anywhere, so the biggest thing for us is that we are finally going to be recognised legally as a couple,” he says. “It’ll mean we can benefit financially from each other in all sorts of ways, which makes me feel more secure. We have discussed what we’d do if something happened to one of us, and if these proposals get to be law we will both be a lot more comfortable thinking about the future.” Among other benefits for gay couples, the proposals could bring joint state pension benefits, joint treatment for income-related benefits, the right to claim a survivor pension, eligibility for bereavement benefits, compensation for fatal accidents, tenancy succession rights and recognition under inheritance and intestacy rules. But Mr Morgan says nothing is yet set in stone. “Show me the money,” he says. “When it’s a real deal I’ll be happy. The present situation in areas such as pensions, inheritance tax and tenancy rights is simply inhumane.” The consultation period on the proposals closes at the end of September. But although the proposals go some way to help end injustices, they are not watertight. Louis Letourneau, director of the gay-focused IFA Isis Financial Planners, points out several shortcomings. “The proposals are extremely good news and well overdue, but we are concerned that some major financial points have not been properly addressed.” Mr Letourneau is worried that the UK’s “piecemeal” approach to equalisation will create many loopholes. He cites the example of Canada where, for legislative purposes, the term “spouse” is now taken to include “registered civil partnership”, so treatment is equalised across the board. Then there’s the issue of tax discrepancies between the treatment of hetero- and homosexual couples, most importantly to do with inheritance tax. At present, a gay partner’s estate gains half the value of the couple’s house and assets, and the surviving partner can find himself or herself paying 40 per cent tax on everything over the £255,000 nil-rate band. In contrast, a married partner’s estate passes automatically to the surviving spouse, with nothing to pay. But unmarried heterosexual couples are excluded from this consultation paper. Beyond a brief acknowledgement that “the tax system should, wherever possible, adapt to reflect changes in society”, and a commitment to “consider the implications for the tax system of any scheme introduced following the outcome of this consultation”, the Government’s proposals make no mention of tax. “Spouses have IHT exemption; is the government going to do the same for same sex couples?” Mr Letourneau asks. “Given its importance, we’d have expected clear details, but it seems to be being left to the Treasury to decide.” When it comes to pensions, the other big financial issue on the civil partnership agenda, the proposals recommend that partner benefits for all public-sector pension schemes and the state pension be equalised, regardless of sex, although the state pension will not start to be equalised until 2010. But Mr Letourneau says that rights with regard to final-salary schemes are much less clearly defined, and the pension trustees will continue to have discretion on whether to recognise the rights of same-sex partners of employees. To confuse matters further, most schemes have contracted their employees out of the state second pension and therefore have to provide an equivalent minimum income for members, representing their protected rights. They already have to pay survivor benefits on that small chunk of pension, and those would be extended to include civil partnerships if the proposals were implemented. “I foresee a situation where there are court challenges if a same-sex partner receives benefits on a tiny chunk of his partner’s pension, while a married partner gets benefits on 100 per cent,” Mr Letourneau says. “Again, the problem seems to be with the Treasury, whose job it would be to force trustees to recognise registered civil partnerships. Tony Blair talked about joined-up government, but there’s little evidence of the Treasury’s input in this issue.” There are other potential problems with the final-salary scheme issue. As Fiona Price of the IFA Fiona Price & Partners says: “Final-salary schemes are already looking precarious as a breed; it will cost £2.6bn to fulfil on pensions and death-in-services benefits for homosexual couples, and that could prove the death knell for these schemes.” But the proposals represent positive steps against discrimination. “The Government is recognising the benefits of a stable relationship, irrespective of sexual orientation, though it raises the wider question of whether it’s the Government’s business to show bias towards long-term relationships at all,” Ms Price says. DETAILS OF THE PLANS FOR CIVIL PARTNERSHIPSThe Home Office’s main proposals for civil partnerships are:
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