To be or not to be married?

My name is Siobhan Courtney and I am a very happily unmarried mother with a five month old son. But this week I’m annoyed – really annoyed. I and thousands of others have been given a slap across the face by Conservative ministers who have now changed their minds about giving cohabiting couples the same rights as married ones. Ken Clarke has rejected proposals put forward by the Law Commission under the last government. And it’s all pretty basic stuff.

Childless couples would have been granted automatic inheritance rights if one of them died without a will, no matter how long they had been together. Couples who lived together for more than two years would have been given inheritance rights. And couples who had been together for five years would have been treated the same way as couples who were married.

After the Ministry of Justice’s u-turn this week, the Law Commission swiftly published