Civil Unions bill impact 'will be a shock'

By ANNE BESTON

Thousands of de facto couples will be "caught in the net" of proposed legislation that could affect everything from having a partner able to commit them to drug and alcohol rehabilitation to deciding how they will be buried.

The changes are contained in the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill, now being considered by a select committee along with the Civil Union Bill, to give equal recognition to marriages, gay or heterosexual civil unions and de facto marriages.

The Relationships Bill amends more than 100 laws to give partners next-of-kin status.

Many laws do not recognise partners as "near relatives".

That would affect everything from wills to how someone was buried to what university allowances they could claim.

The Law Society told Parliament's justice and electoral select committee yesterday that people in de facto marriages "may not be prepared for the wide-ranging impact this bill will have on their legal rights and obligations".

There were practical difficulties with giving de facto marriages the same status as marriage and civil union, said Law Society legislative committee member Rachel Dunningham.

The bill did not specify how long people could be together before they were deemed to be in a de facto marriage and definitions of de facto marriages in the Relationships Bill needed to be clearer, she said.

Act MP Stephen Franks, a member of the justice and law select committee and a critic of the bill, said the approximately 160,000 to 180,000 de facto couples would have no idea just how far-reaching the changes to their lives could be.

"Married couples and de facto couples will be identical for all practical purposes," he said.

"People will not be thinking about this when they shack up."

Select committee chairman Tim Barnett acknowledged definition of de facto couples and that there was no time specified for how long couples had been together before they were considered to be partners, were problems.

"It is a difficulty, to come up with law that's flexible enough to respond to the range of human relationships is a tough one," he said.

Officials would be working on those issues after public submissions finished next month, he said.

The Relationships Bill had plenty of benefits for de facto couples, including allowing partners to be buried in the same grave, and treating a partner as next-of-kin in the case of an accident or death.

Other submissions were made by gay, lesbian, church and women's groups, supporting the Civil Union and the Relationships Bills.