[Moderator – Community of acquests does exactly what it says on the tin: what’s yours is hers and what’s hers is yours. The only exceptions are legacies and inheritances. So if your mother gives you a cash gift while she is still alive, your wife has an equal claim on it. But if your mother leaves you that same amount by virtue of her last will and testament, it’s yours alone. The legal regime is one of the most important things that should be taught to people entering into marriage, but it isn’t.]

[Moderator – I never said he’s a bishop. I said he is unrestrained, and is likely to be the source of a lot of trouble that nobody needs, all in the name of God.]

[Moderator – That isn’t recognition of couples by the state. Children’s allowance is for the children, regardless of the marital status of their parents.]

This is the reply I got from IRD

“Ghaziz Sinjur

Nixtieq ninfurmak li t-total ta’ qlieh li hemm f’kaxxa numru 23 irid jigi iddikjarat kollu jew f’kaxxa 24 d jew 24 e. Jigifieri dan l-income kollu irid jigi iddikjarat ma minn ghandu l-ghola income.

Ma tistax tintbghat karta ohra tat-taxxa f’isem il-mara tieghek.

Dejjem Tieghek”
XXXXXXXXXX

I would be very glad if your statement was true.

{Moderator – It is true; you can have separate tax returns. What this civil servant is telling you is that you can’t add income from investments to the lower of the two salaries to get away with paying less tax, the reason being that this income is jointly received also by the person with the higher salary. That’s the trouble with community of acquests: it’s considered one income.

[Moderator – What the Archbishop says is irrelevant, given that he doesn’t appear able to restrain Anton Gouder, who has embarked on a holy crusade against divorce.]

Why are people asking for divorce legislation when they can live together and are ‘recognised’ by the state (e.g.when they have children)?

Why are people in the first place making a wedding ceremony where they solemnly vow that they will support each other “till death do (they)us part”?

Nowadays it is not even financially viable to get married formally. While filling an income tax form lately , I found out that under the section where one declares “other income” , ALL the income from dividends , rent etc is added to the spouse who earns most money even though the income is earned by the other spouse, resulting in a higher tax rate!
In this case a married couple pays MORE tax than two unmarried persons even though the married couple chooses a “separate” assessment? How’s that for supporting the ‘traditional’ stable family?

[Moderator – Couples are NOT “recognised by the state”, by which you probably mean that they have special legal status and rights, just because they live together, whether or not they have children. Where did you get this notion? It’s not even the case in the UK, though the myth persists about common-law husbands and wives. You don’t have to have a joint income tax return when you’re married, and you don’t even have to have community of acquests. You can be married and still keep your financial affairs completely independent of your spouse. Community of acquests is the default regime, not the only one, but almost nobody knows this. Married couples can agree to do away with the community of acquests regime by means of a simple notarial document, and still stay married. The spouse who earns much less or even nothing would be crazy to agree to it, but if both spouses earn roughly the same amount, and agree to make all investments jointly, then it should be no bother.]

[Moderator – The ban on abortion in Malta is qualified by the fact that Maltese girls and women have access to abortion clinics a short, cheap catamaran ride away in Sicily. We have no idea what the real effect of denying abortion to Maltese people might be, because there is no way we are ever going to experience it. There is a difference between banning something and denying people all access to it. Abortion is banned in Malta but Maltese still have very easy access to it. It’s not the same as the lack of divorce legislation, because to get a divorce overseas, you need to be resident there, a complicated, expensive and at times unrealistic process available only to the very few. If you need an abortion, on the other hand, you just hop on a catamaran with your credit card in your pocket or some euros you’ve withdrawn from the cash machine. So yes, banning abortion in Malta is ultimately pointless. The only purpose it serves is to salve our collective conscience and allow us to pretend that nobody in Malta has abortions, even though thousands have done so over the last couple of decades – and that’s just going on the statistics from the London clinics alone.]

[Moderator – Yes, that’s right. The bishops want divorce to remain unavailable in Malta, so that it will be unavailable to those who were ‘captured’ into the Catholic Church in infancy.]