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No Right to Adopt for Co-Habiting Northern Irish Couple

Judge suggests marriage as solution to the couple’s problem

by Hilary White
 
BELFAST, June 4, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An unmarried couple has been denied an appeal to allow the woman’s live-in male partner to adopt her child. The child, a ten-year old girl who has been identified in the press only as “P”, was born after the woman’s partner, called “Y”, had lived with her for some months.
 
The BBC reports that Lord Chief Justice Brian Kerr ruled this relationship did not constitute grounds for the man to adopt the child as his own daughter. Under Northern Irish law unmarried couples may not adopt children and the court rejected the couple’s claim that the ban “discriminated” against them.
 
Kerr suggested marriage as a solution to the couple’s problem.
 
British rates of cohabitation have skyrocketed since the 1960’s, as they have nearly everywhere else in the western world. Research has shown, however, that as a substitute for lawful marriage, cohabitation has drawbacks more than sufficient to offset perceived advantages.
 
Statistics show that although many in Britain believe that having children as an unmarried couple lends stability to the relationship, the opposite is true. About 15 per cent of one-parent families are created through the break-up of cohabiting unions. Less than ten per cent of women who have their first child in a cohabiting relationship are still cohabiting ten years later and only half of these will eventually marry.
 
According to 2000 figures, only 36 per cent of British children born to cohabiting parents can expect to live their entire childhood with their natural parents.  

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