Why should cohabitees get the benefits of marriage?

One way or another in life, we end up making choices, even if we think we’re choosing not to choose. The choice not to marry, to live with someone instead, is one example. Passing on the public commitment and going for sex plus domesticity is a choice, one in which, I imagine, the absence of commitment is part of the appeal. You don’t fancy the for-better-or-worse stuff, the Waterford glass wedding presents, the joint pension provision? Well, that’s just dandy, but complaining that you don’t have the perks of matrimony when your open-ended arrangement breaks up does seem to be trying to have it both ways.

And having it both ways is precisely what the government seems to want to encourage.  It’s launching a consultation on giving greater rights to cohabitees. We all know, don’t we, what a consultation entails? It means going through the motions to arrive at the conclusions that you’ve already come to.