Civil Partnerships at 20: Complications remain
- kellygrigg
- Feb 16
- 1 min read
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, which came into effect on 5 December 2005. The first civil partnership registration took place that same day.
At their inception, civil partnerships were intended to provide legal recognition for same-sex couples, affording them the same protections and rights as married couples. Less than a decade later, in 2014, same-sex marriage was legalised. A high-profile Supreme Court judgment in 2018 (Steinfeld and Keidan), which concluded that the absence of heterosexual civil partnerships was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, then led to the introduction of civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples in 2019.
Although civil partnerships and marriages are often described as legally analogous, there remain challenges, particularly in the dissolution of a civil partnership and for those with international connections.
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