Sir Mark Potter spoke in Belfast at the 17th World congress of the International Association of Youth and Family Judges and Magistrates. He opened his address with consideration to the title of this address and also looked back at the last 30 years of how cohabitation had become socially acceptable.
"........ so far and fast have legislative events and assumptions concerning the family moved in the last few decades as compared with the centuries which have gone before."
"In fact, until quite late in the 20th Century the approach of English law in the field of Family Law was to concern itself with the form and status of marriage and the rights arising between the parties on its formation and dissolution, including rights of custody and access in respect of children of the marriage, and to discount or ignore unmarried co-habitation as a proper, or at any rate desirable, basis for family life. Indeed, at the beginning of this 21st Century, whilst recognising the wider forms of family life, in particular for the purposes of child protection, our family law is still essentially marriage-centred."
"Over the last 30 years, however, for a variety of reasons unmarried cohabitation has become socially so widely practised and accepted at all levels of society and the number of couples electing to cohabit has risen so fast, that social and peer pressure to acquire married status, even for the purpose of childbearing, is now confined to particular sections of society. Between 1986 and 1989 cohabitation increased from 5% to 15% of all couples in the United Kingdom, and now over a quarter of children are born to unmarried cohabiting parents. In the National Statistics of 2004 these trends are predicted to continue and increase. Marriage is still broadly valued as an ideal, but the decision whether or not to marry or simply to cohabit is widely recognised to be a question of personal choice in relation to which questions of stigma no longer attach."
"So far as the attitude of the United Kingdom Government is concerned it is still supportive, and I believe rightly supportive, of the institution of marriage."
