Same-sex couples have it difficult enough as it is, so if a new cohabitation law helps them get status and recognition we should go ahead with it.

The obligations of reciprocal maintenance between spouses (unless excluded by agreement) and marital fidelity (which cannot be excluded even by agreement) remain unchanged. It is therefore impossible to enact a law giving rights to cohabiting couples if at least one of the two is still married for there would be a breach of the fidelity obligation unless, that is, the obligation of marital fidelity in the case of separated couples is also removed by law.

This is the situation, pure and simple.

100% correct.

They invented something new in the process – ‘nofs zwieg’.

Strengthening the family indeed. LOL just doesn’t cover it. It’s more like 100 ROTFLMAOs.

Let’s not fix the broken road, but shape the wheels to the pot-holes instead.

Malta is the laughing stock of the world.

What’s more? Going into a cohabiting relationship will probably be relatively easy to get out of … would this lead to the equivalent of a Las Vegas style divorce where one can just “leave” the relationship with little more than a few signatures in front of a notary? So much for the conservative 4-year period in the proposed law being a ‘divorzju bla raguni’!

However, this legislation should have gone hand in hand with the introduction of divorce through a simple addition to the separation laws in our civil code, allowing separated people to remarry while still enforcing a separation contract, not through a referendum.

But we are in Malta, so viva the square wheel.

Same-sex couples will now have rights and legal recognition, before separated people who wish to have the same through remarriage.

Excuse me, but I must say this …. LOL

http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=125834