Public divided on financial support
4 Aug 05
Social attitudes survey reveals doubts over support obligations when childless couples separate
Members of the public believe that childless cohabiting couples should not be financially obligated to one another in the event of breakup, despite some measures included in the proposed Family Law (Scotland) Bill.
The findings were published as part of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2004, commissioned by the Scottish Executive's Legal Studies Research Team and the Nuffield Foundation, which included a section with questions on family matters.
The report said: "While evidence about public attitudes to responsibilities of wider kin relationships and public understanding of family law is only one input to policy formation in family law, it is an important one if social and family policies are to go with the grain of public opinion."
Although one of the key reasons for family law reform was to enable certain laws that had previously applied to married couples to apply also, where appropriate, to co-habiting partners, 57 per cent of respondents to the survey said that when a childless cohabiting couple separated, a partner with a lower income should not be entitled to financial support from the other.
However in relation to childless married couples there was also a split of opinion - 50 per cent said that they should have financial obligations towards each other, and 47 per cent said that they should not.
The Family Law Bill allows for a court to order one partner to pay a sum to the other partner in the event of a relationship break-up. It also makes the presumption that household goods should be divided equally between the partners. However the bill will not confer the same financial protection as marriage.
The study also found an increasing acceptance of homosexual sexual relations, which are thought to be rarely wrong or not wrong at all by 42% of respondents, a higher proportion than the 37% who thought so in 2000. It is perhaps not surprising, the report says, that 39% of respondents thought that gay or lesbian couples should be able to marry if they wish.
The study's authors, Fran Wasoff and Claudia Martin, said that the study had come "at an opportune moment".