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Do you remember reading about and about how, when the actor Nigel Hawthorne he died, his partner of many years had to pay a huge inheritance tax bill? The same thing happened to many other same sex couples – in many cases, the grieving partner has even been forced to sell the couple’s home in order to pay the bill. While married people could leave each other a fortune without the survivor having to pay a penny of tax, we were never able to benefit from this ‘spousal exemption’.
That is changing in December, of course, with the introduction of civil partnership. Once people register as civil partners, they too will be able to leave each other everything in their wills without having to worry about the tax implications.
But what about those couples who applauded the passing of the Civil Partnership Act last November and who have been looking forward to registering . . . . . and then one of them dies before that is legally possible?
Most people who find themselves in this situation will have been partners for many years and will have expressed an intention of registering – it is cruel and inhumane that the surviving partner should be made to pay the tax on top of everything they have just suffered. The intention of tax is to apply it when someone accrues a benefit. How grossly immoral to suggest that the death of one’s loved, long-term partner is a “benefit”. Recently, several people in this situation have contacted my company to see if we can help them. We put them in touch with each other and they have been taking legal advice on how to get justice from the Inland Revenue.
At first it was thought that couples where one partner died between passage of the act (November 2004) and the first date when registration can take place (December 2005) might have a claim but the legal advisers said this was not the case. However, legal opinion is optimistic that a claim might be made under the Human Rights Act, which came into force for England and Wales on 2 October 2000.
Every case will have its special circumstances which can increase the likelihood of winning. The people we have spoken to would like to find other people who have lost their partners since October 2000 and who have had to pay inheritance tax to join their group and share their information and the legal costs and thus greatly increase the likelihood of everyone winning. It would be a proud moral victory for human rights and the whole of the gay community. One of my colleagues, Louis Letourneau, has offered to act as co-ordinator for the group.
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