Here's a new social problem for the Conservative Party to consider. With the sharp rise in sustained cohabitation in recent years, a key way in which cohabiting couples have signalled their commitment to each other - in lieu of any credibility to the "commitment" of the marriage service - has been through buying a house together. Since buying houses is unlikely to feature much as an activity for a sustained period - perhaps the next ten years - this seems to create a considerable gap in the market for family commitment devices. Perhaps people will return to marriage contracts, but that does not seem likely. Can the State devise either a radically different marriage contract (perhaps something along the lines of the term civil unions and justice-based partnerships I have proposed previously*) or come up with some other way for family commitments to be made?
*P.S. These involved: a reduction in the vows exchanged to only those the State intended to enforce; the offering of state marriage contracts of 1, 5, and 10 years, in addition to whole-life; the automatic inclusion in the 1 year contact of anyone cohabiting for more than a short period; permission for polygamous union, as well as homosexual and heterosexual monogamous unions; the introduction of justice-based partnerships, which would be available once per life, in which guilt was always assigned to divorce, and in which divisions of property, children etc upon divorce were based on justice, not welfare.