Bereaved cohabitant Siobhan McLaughlin has won her case at the Supreme Court that unmarried couples should have a right to the widowed parent’s allowance.
In Re an application by Siobhan McLaughlin for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) [2018] UKSC 48, the Supreme Court held 4-1 that the legislative requirement for marriage unjustifiably discriminated against the survivor and the children on the basis of their marital or birth status, contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, Arts 8 and 14.
McLaughlin lived with her partner, John Adams, as man and wife for 23 years until his death in 2014, and they had four children together. State benefits made up part of the family’s income. When Mr Adams died, McLaughlin claimed bereavement payment and widowed parent’s allowance but was refused because she had not been married or in a civil partnership. Both these state benefits have a contributory element, are non-means-tested, and are based on payments by the deceased from occupational income. McLaughlin sought judicial review.
Delivering judgment, Lady Hale said: ‘[The widowed parent’s allowance’s] purpose must be to benefit the children. The situation of the children is thus an essential part of the comparison… had the couple been married, their treatment would be very different: their household would have significantly more to live on while their carer is in work.’
Margaret Heathcote, Chair of family justice organisation Resolution, said the decision ‘supports families and their children regardless of how those families are labelled’.
Recent estimates suggest one in eight adults in England and Wales are living together unmarried, but the couple’s legal rights when the relationship ends are widely misunderstood, she said.
She called on the government to put in place ‘minimum basic rights for these couples’. Scotland extended statutory rights to cohabiting couples in 2006 and in 2007 the Law Commission recommended reforms that would legally recognise the relationship status of these couples in England and Wales.
Maeve O’Higgins, head of family law at Burlingtons said: ‘This case highlights the very different treatment under the law between married and unmarried partners on the ending of their relationship, whether following the breakdown of their couple relationship, or the death of one of the partners. It also emphasises the continued widespread unawareness of the lack of rights for cohabiting partners.
‘In 2016 the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee recommended that the bereavement benefits should be extended to cohabiting couples. The committee also pointed out that the cost of doing this could be limited to £21.6m, if bereavement benefits were extended only to those unmarried partners who (like Siobhan) were left with dependent children. The Government are now considering the implications of the Supreme Court ruling but it remains unclear if and when the law regarding bereavement benefits will be changed in favour of unmarried partners’.
Alison Penny, director, Childhood Bereavement Network, which supported the case, said: ‘While [McLaughlin] brought her case in Northern Ireland, it has implications for the rest of the UK where the wording of the eligibility criteria is the same. If current policy is in breach of the Human Rights Act in Northern Ireland, it must be in breach in the rest of the UK too.’
