Marrying a long term partner

Mmmm, slightly off topic, but you have got me thinking. Both my husband and I are British, but have been living abroad for many, many years. We got married here in Spain, but I don't think we registered the wedding in Britain. I wonder if we need to do anything like that, or our Spanish papers will be binding, if something happened to him, would I be entitled to a widow's pension from the UK? I have no idea...food for thought. Best call the consulate, methinks

Get married!

You need to register Lasting Power of Attorney x 2 for each of you. One covers health and welfare, the other finance and property. You can do it yourself online (there is step-by-step help and advice) or you can pay a solicitor a few hundred £s to give you the same help and advice and type in the answers.

www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney

And you might as well get married too. You can pop along to the registry office and get it done for (I think) £50 as long as you don't want anything fancy.

You need to be married for pension rights etc..

www.relationshipexpert.co.uk/the-myths-of-common-law-marriage.html

But do check anything that you find in the internet very carefully because everyone's situation is different and not all of the advice is accurate and up-to-date.

Sadly, heterosexual couples do not have the same rights as gay couples and cannot enter into a civil partnership. Read this BBC new article from just yesterday www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44106272
I would suggest you, sooner rather than later, organise a civil wedding ceremony with just a couple of witnesses if you don't want the whole shebang.

Are you saying GabriellaG that even though my partner and I have made wills and my name is on the deeds of the house his family can override this.

susieq3 You should be OK if you are 'joint tenants' and not 'tenants in common'.

This is nothing new, so I’m surprised people don’t seem aware of it. Perhaps more publicity? And good luck t9 the heterosexual couple currently challenging the ‘no Civil Partnership’ Law.

I honestly don't understand the difference between a civil partnership and a civil wedding. What is it that this heterosexual couple want? (publicity?)

I cannot see why we need civil partnerships at all since we now have same-sex marriage. I wonder how many same-sex couples have opted for civil partnerships since they had the choice.

Why not just change the law so that everyone who had a civil partnership before the equal marriage laws is considered married and given exactly the same rights as a married couple, then abolish civil partnerships.

I don't understand why some heterosexual couples wish to have a civil partnership; as far as I can see, there is little difference between a civil partnership and a registry office wedding. No religion, just a legal contract. At the risk of sounding a bit intolerant, I do think some people make an unnecessary fuss and see difficulties when there are not any there. A registrar will make everything legal, will be far cheaper than masses of legal papers drawn up by a solicitor, it's a no brainer really.

More than 2,000 bereaved families are thought to miss out on financial support each year because the parents were not married. The Childhood Bereavement Network, which supports bereaved children and their families, calculated the figure from government data on population trends. It also predicts that this number will rise as more young couples with children opt to cohabit rather than marry. Rules restrict bereavement payments and other allowances for widowed parents to those who were married or in a civil partnership

Just did a bit of reading, the only difference I can see, is that in a divorce, one of the spouses can use adultery as a reason for said divorce, whereas in a civil partnership, adultery is not contemplated; from what I can see, this is, because adultery is defined as "sleeping with another person of opposite sex" - unlikely in a civil partnership as they are only available for homosexuals.