New and revised family law declarations: civil partnership and cohabitants
The Conveyancing Committee has recently published a new set of precedent family law declarations to take account of the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010. These can be found in the precedents section and on the committee’s page in the members’ area of the Law Society’s website. A table of all current declarations is also published as a basic guide to use of the precedents. Some of the precedents are revised versions of pre-existing declarations for married or single people, while others are new declarations to cater for civil partners and for cohabitants.
It is vital for practitioners to take full and detailed instructions of clients’ history of marriage, civil partnership and cohabitation. The precedents are drafted to deal with most routine situations, but practitioners should adapt them to meet the facts of individual cases as necessary, and it may be appropriate, in some cases, to use parts of two or more precedents.