Everything you need to know about civil partnerships

Marriage sceptics who never quite made it up the aisle were rejoicing last week following Theresa May's announcement that heterosexual couples will now be eligible for civil partnerships. A success, she says, for any pairs wanting to formalise things but “don’t necessarily want to get married.”

The news follows a supreme court ruling in June this year, hard fought by equality campaigners Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, that found restrictions on same-sex civil partnerships in breach of human rights.  

With 3.3 million cohabiting couples in the UK the change, which will give partners a similar legal status as married couples, from income and inheritance tax breaks to next-of-kin arrangements.

Originally introduced for same-sex couples in 2004, civil partnerships - a union formalised by a signature, similar to its traditional counterpart - can be converted to marriage later on.

But the new amendment will not automatically protect cohabiting couples of all kinds. Nowadays, 'family’ home life can mean many things - not just romantic partners but grown siblings or even best friends, who decide to live together, pool their money and childcare. 

Catherine Utley has lived with her sister, Ginda, for 30 years: the pair co-own a house, and jointly raised the former's daughter together. Utley, 59, is seeking a civil partnership so as not to be stung by inheritance tax stipulations that affect those outside of formalised pairings. "It wasn't possible for me to live with the father," she says of her decision to move in with her sister while pregnant in 1993. "She's like my other half, she's my best friend."

It is a "glaring injustice," she adds, that siblings have not been accounted for in the new government legislation; "pure discrimination," she explains. "I could have a civil partnership with my next door neighbour, but I can't have a civil partnership with the person I have shared my home and life with."

She fears that, given platonic partnerships remain unprotected, the death of one party could result in the property needing to be sold in order to pay the inheritance tax debt.

A way around this could be for the person who dies to leave the property to their significant other on trust in their will. But efforts are underway to argue the case for platonic unions to have lasting economic rights: Lord Lexden has brought a Private Member's Bill, now on its second reading, to the Lords, campaigning for siblings who’ve lived together for 12 years and are over the age of 30 to be allowed a civil partnership.

“Brothers and sisters in such committed, platonic relationship— and indeed many other long-term co-habitees—can be hit hard because they are denied all legal safeguards," he said. "The rights available under the Civil Partnership Act are vital to give security to every co-habitee.”

As reported to Anna Clarke