Cohabitant pension rights have been strengthened by the recent decision of the Supreme Court on the requirement for nomination, explains Nicholas Dobson
- Requiring a pension scheme member to nominate an informal domestic partner as a condition of her receiving a survivor’s benefit on the death of the pensioner breached Art 14 when read with A1P1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In 2015 American singer/songwriter, Angel Easterling told us: ‘I’m a common law wife, living out my life/I ain’t got no license, I’m a common law wife.’ However, in English law the term has social rather than legal significance. And while Robert Lloyd (the 18th century poet and satirist) once told Lord Chief Justice Mansfield that he was born to ‘strip chicanery of its vain pretence’ and ‘marry Common Law to Common Sense’, in England the legal rights of informal domestic cohabitants remain uncertain and highly context specific.
But (in what The Guardian described as a ‘significant extension of unmarried cohabitees’ rights’ which ‘could affect millions of families’), on 8 February 2017 the Supreme Court unanimously decided that Northern Ireland local government pension
