Page 50adjunct to your partner’s life.
It happened to me — and it could
happen to you, too, if you are part of a
family and don’t get married.
When my fiancé Paolo died suddenly
in July 2017 at the age of 39, I was
bereft. We had lived together for eight
years, had a toddler son and were
planning a second child. dealing with
my agonising grief while caring for
Connor was all-consuming. And when
I most needed the support of the
authorities, I was frozen out.
Legally, our relationship meant
nothing. I’d always believed we were
‘as good as’ married. But despite
widespread use of the term, there is
no such thing as common law marriage
in Britain — and when Paolo died, I
had no rights at all.
data released yesterday by the Office
for national Statistics revealed
cohabiting couples are the fastest
growing type of family in the UK, with
3.4 million couples living together
without being married or civil
partners.
Other research has shown only 26
per cent of them have made wills.
This terrifies me. How many of those
couples realise that if one partner
dies, the other won’t automatically
inherit their property, or be entitled to
their pension or life insurance? How
many of them are aware that,
unlike a bereaved married
person, they might have to
pay significant tax on
anything their partner
left them?
nobody likes to
think about death
and disaster — but
the sky can cave in
at any moment.
Paolo and I met in
2009 on a night out
in London. Tall, dark
and handsome, with
a strong Italian accent,
he was a huge character
with hundreds of friends
— totally in contrast to me.
But, as they say, opposites
attract. He was caring, funny
and generous.
We got engaged the following year,
then bought a house together. In 2016
our son Connor came along.
Paolo was the most loving, hands-on
dad. Sometimes, he’d fall asleep with
Connor in his arms, and I’d watch
them together, my heart full of
happiness. An only child himself,
Paolo wanted a big family.W
E ALWAYS intended
to get married —
Paolo had even picked
out the church in Italy
— but we had other priorities, like our
careers (I work as a dental hygienist
and Paolo was a product manager for
a travel company) our home and our
son, so we hadn’t set a date.
I’ve never been that girl who dreams
of a big wedding, and I didn’t think
there was any urgency. We would get
around to it one day, probably after
we had our second child.
So many couples now live together, I
took it for granted that this type of
family was recognised by law as well
as society. If we could get a mortgage
together and register our child’s birth
together, surely our relationship
meant something legally?
By the summer of 2017, when Connor
was 17 months old and I was 42, we
were in the process of selling our house
in Surrey and planning to move to
Cheshire to be nearer family. Paolo hadalready got a new job in the area and
would spend weekdays there before
coming home to us on Friday.
When one weekend he said he felt
very tired, I just thought he’d caught
a virus and had been overdoing it. On
the Tuesday, he called from Cheshire
to say he’d been sick and had a bad
cough. I told him to get plenty of rest.
The next day, I thought it was odd
that he didn’t reply to my texts. When
he didn’t phone me at lunchtime —
something he’d done every day since
we met — I called his work and they
told me he hadn’t come in.
That’s when I started to panic.
desperately, I phoned local hospitals
and his landlady, begging her to check
on him.
Paolo bounced out of bed every
morning and I can’t remember him
ever taking a day off work. His
grandma lived to 104 and we used to
joke he’d have 40 years on his own
because I was bound to go first.
But that evening as I turned
into my driveway, I saw a
police car — and
everything went into
slow motion.
I watched as the
policewoman got
out of the car, put
her hat on and
started walking
towards me. I
kept saying, ‘no,
no, no, no,’ over
and over.
Paolo had been
found dead in his
bedroom. The official
cause of death was
pneumonia, but the coroner
said he’d never seen a case like his
before. It was inexplicable.
I was in shock for many months,
barely able to function. The worst
thing, even now, is not knowing exactly
how he died. It haunts me.
Organising the funeral — which more
than 400 people attended — was
horrible. But, for me, the torment was
just beginning.
When I tried to register Paolo’s
death, I was told I wasn’t his relative;
and because he had died at a different
address, I wasn’t even seen as a
significant other.
Then I had to deal with informing
everyone of his death, closing his bank
accounts and credit cards, sorting out
savings, his pension and trying to
transfer things to my accounts so I
could pay the bills.
I knew it would be a tough job, but it
was so much worse than it had to be
— purely because I wasn’t his wife.
Every single call was an ordeal. When
you’re grieving, it takes all your energy
just to pick up the phone. Being told,
‘Sorry, I can’t talk to you because you
don’t count,’ is like a slap in the face.
Because we weren’t married, I had
no entitlement to Paolo’s last salary
— which I needed to pay our mortgage.
The bank would pay that money only
to our son Connor, who didn’t have a
bank account.
Foolishly, we hadn’t written wills —
although we’d talked about it. Instead,
I had to go through the complicated
process of probate, which took
months, cost thousands in solicitors’(^) Daily Mail, Thursday, August 8, 2019
50 femailMAGAZINE
Why you
need a will
Without one, the
surviving partner will not
automatically inherit
anything unless you own
property jointly.
S
ITTInG in a stark waiting room at the local
register office, I was beginning to become
hysterical. I was there to record the death of my
beloved partner Paolo, the father of our young
son. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do
in my life — and nobody was listening to me.
Instead, they were telling me they didn’t know who I was or why I was
there — even though my sister had rung ahead to make the appoint-
ment — and, worse, that I wasn’t allowed to be the one to register
Paolo’s death because they didn’t recognise our relationship.
Cold and unhelpful, they left me feeling utterly abandoned.
Think of the pain of losing the love of your life without warning. now
imagine that, as your world shatters, you are simultaneously catapulted
into a bureaucratic nightmare and made to feel like a worthless
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