A prominent UK legal expert has urged the Government to scrap its plans to introduce legal rights for cohabiting couples who separate, on the grounds that it will be a “windfall” for family lawyers but for no-one else.

Under the Government’s proposed Civil Partnership Bill, cohabiting couples who split could be forced to pay maintenence or to give up a share of their property to their former partners even though they never formally entered a legal relationship. This automatic or ‘presumptive’ scheme would apply to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, where the couple have been living together for three years, or for two years if they have children.

However, Baroness Deech, the chairman of the UK’s Bar Standards Board and a a former chief of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, told The Irish Times that the new law was set to be a “windfall for lawyers but for no-one else except the gold digger”.

Imposing the penalties of a “failed marriage” on cohabiting couples who may be trying out their relationships before getting married was wrong, she said.

Baroness Deech, who is also professor of law at Gresham College said that there should be “a corner of freedom where couples may escape family law with all its difficulties”.

She added: “Cohabitation is not marriage, now or historically.”

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has claimed that the legislation is aimed at protecting vulnerable and financially dependent cohabitants in the event of death or relationship breakup. Couples may opt out of the scheme by drafting a legally binding agreement to regulate their financial affairs.

However, critics of the legislation have warned that the scheme may create “a false sense of security” for cohabiting couples.

Professor John Mee of UCC says that the provisions are “well meaning but seriously flawed”, and warned that they may do more harm than good.

Professor Mee, urging the Government to scrap the provisions relating to cohabiting couples, said that such couples “may assume that the new law will protect them and fail to take steps to safeguard their separate property rights”.

The main intent of the Bill is to allow same-sex couples to form civil partnerships which will have almost all of the rights of marriage.