Marriage and "nearest relative" legal questions

[John A]

I have discovered that if I marry my fiancee legally before I get a job, we'll lose about 50% of our state benefits, even if we don't start living together immediately. This set me thinking as to whether I might be able to "have my cake and eat it."

I am also aware that if a non-conformist (i.e. non-Anglican) minister of religion - or anybody else for that matter - conducts a wedding ceremony without the registrar present, and issues a purely ecclesiastical certificate to the effect that he has done this, we won't be legally married, although the church won't regard us a living in sin either. (It's easy enough to start one's own church if nobody I already know will perform the ceremony. I was thinking of doing this anyway, for other reasons.)

Would an ecclesiatical marriage not recognised by the state be sufficient (if the mental health didn't read the papers too carefully) to establish me as my fiancee's Nearest Relative for Mental Health Act purposes? (As nearest relative, I could bestow upon my beloved a power her mother won't give her to refuse the unwanted attentions of the "mental health" industry.)

Alternatively, can my fiancee substitute me, her fiance, for her 83 year-old mother as her Mental Health Act Nearest Relative?

My fiancee is a mental health service user. I am not.

 

[Dollit]

If you are "married" in any sense of the word the benefits agency is going to want to look into the details. They may look upon what you are proposing as intent to defraud. You have to ask yourself if it is worth it.

The second part of your question. I have been told on countless occasions (by medical doctors as well as those involved in mental health) that who ever I name as my next of kin is up to me and there does not have to be a blood connection you are merely saying that the person you have named knows your intentions and can act for you if you can't act for yourself. My ex was named with my consultant for a long time, we never married and we were all okay with that. Currently it's my sister.

 

[John A]

I am grateful to Dollit for the attempt to address our interesting little problem.

If you are "married" in any sense of the word the benefits agency is going to want to look into the details. They may look upon what you are proposing as intent to defraud. You have to ask yourself if it is worth it.

I've already looked into this when asking the benefits agency for advice as to the legal position, and what you say isn't true. If my fiancee and I are not legally married, and if we maintain separate homes, but visit one another for conjugal visits, or stay away together in hotels, this won't affect our benefits. Repeat: Becoming "married" solely in the biblical sense of the word of having a publicly declared, exclusive sexual relationship that both parties intend to be lifelong for better or for worse, even though they don't share an address, finances and a "marriage" relationship recognised by the state, won't affect benefits. They would want to look into it if we were cohabiting, yes, but they don't ask whether one is in love, and conducting what, on paper, looks like an "affair". They wouldn't be allowed under the freedom of religion article of the ECHR to discriminate on the basis of mere faith community ceremonies that, for technical reasons, fell short of creating the legal contract of "marriage" between the covenanting parties, in the eyes of the law of the land.

The second part of your question. I have been told on countless occasions (by medical doctors as well as those involved in mental health) that who ever I name as my next of kin is up to me and there does not have to be a blood connection you are merely saying that the person you have named knows your intentions and can act for you if you can't act for yourself. My ex was named with my consultant for a long time, we never married and we were all okay with that. Currently it's my sister.

There is a legal difference, I believe, between one's next of kin, and one's Nearest Relative for Mental Health Act purposes. A Nearest Relative is in a position to get a section lifted. A mere next of kin doesn't have that statutory power.

That means that unless we get married legally and thus acquire in our "hand" the "ace of trumps" Nearest Relative "card" that beats the powers of the Mental Health over us, every "trick" - or acquire mutual Nearest Relative status by other means, then the Mental Health gets to decide whether to split a couple up, by sectioning one or both of the lovers to punish them for getting together without their "parental approval" (so-to-speak), as though the adults concerned were merely the teenaged children of the Mental Health industry.

This isn't a new problem. In the US, the slaves got around the problem by jumping over a broom together in the barn, on the plantation, creating a marriage the other slaves recognised, but which the "massa" didn't. They had to adapt the marriage vows, "till death or distance do us part", but Nearest Relative status gets around the parallel problem today; it would force our "massa" to recognise our relationship as a fait accompli it was too late for them to sagotage, each of us holding the other's "get out of jail free" card, so-to-speak.

Before my mother and my previous wife died, I was unsectionable, because they supported my work, which makes me a prime target for sectioning. When they died, I quickly secured the agreement of all five of my siblings and all four of my offspring that they would object strongly to any attempt to take me off the streets using the MHA, so I am untouchable again. But my fiancee remains vulnerable to arbitrary sectioning, and we'll be penalised financially if we pursue (an adaptation of) our original cunning plan (formed before we fell in love), of having (on paper) an (unconsummated) marriage of convenience that the state recognised, making me her Nearest Relative un the MHA, with all the glorious statutory powers to protect her from the Mental Health that that brings.

 

[Rorschach]

My wife and I are married outside British statutory law, and the MH teams have treated her as both my 'nearest relative' (tho' this hasn't been put into practice as I've not been sectioned for ages), and my next of kin. I suppose the fact we have three children makes the case more than if we were just married under our religious rite.

 

[John A]

My wife and I are married outside British statutory law, and the MH teams have treated her as both my 'nearest relative' (tho' this hasn't been put into practice as I've not been sectioned for ages), and my next of kin.

That is spectacularly good news, and answers my question perfectly. Thank you!

"The system" owes me bigtime, and I'm determined to play the system for whatever I claw get back in the way of resources to fight the system until the day I die. Eight years ago, I was earning £1,400 a week in the city as an I.T. contractor when somebody took my name and address when I phoned the BBC, asking if subliminal voice messages were included in their broadcast output. Two days later, thanks to the local help of a CPN ex-wife who was trying to make it difficult for my children to visit me at the time, and who confiscated one of their keys to my home, I woke up with a roomful of strangers around me, and a police car outside, to take me away.

I was out within three days, but the irreparable harm was done. Word got around that I'd been sectioned. I lost my day job immediately, and since then, I have only had one grand-a-week I.T. day job, a job that no amount of black-listing could thwart, because it was four years-worth of repeat business from a private tycoon who head-hunted me from unemployment back onto the team for his next enterprise initiative.

Since there have been times when I've had four other TIs sleeping on my council flat floor, and have had to turn other applicants for refuge away, the plan is for "the first lady" to milk the Mental Health for a council flat of her own somewhere not too far away, doubling the accommodation available to "the movement".

Some people in other threads express a patronising pity for me, imagining that my life must be nightmarish and isolated due to what they consider to be my "delusions", but the truth is that, as the apostle Paul put it, "Outwardly, we are fading away. But inwardly we are being renewed every day."

Yes, it's tough being tortured by God-knows-who, armed with God-knows-what non-lethal weapons technology that still hasn't been declassified, like the last lot mentioned in another thread, which wasn't declassified until about 15 months ago. But what goes a long way towards compensating for this suffering is the intense comradeship of activism, and the vibrant fellowship of non-targets in my faith community, who have twigged that something is indeed badly awry in the world today (exactly as prophesied in the bible, and just as our TI community has been saying to more than one faith community), and that Mental Health helps to keep this bad news suppressed, by stigmatising the whistle-blowers, whenever possible, even turning their own families against them when they can, with a very polished, "I'm a doctor - trust me - your relative is poorly in his mind and we have the cure" sales pitch.

John

PS See if you like the cartoon by a Scandavian activist that's part of the leaflet published at http://wmamw.com/CPAtr-foldLeaflet.doc

 

[Michael]

I have great difficulty when people appear to use the system.
Whether the reasons behind it are good or bad, I think it puts the DHS on alert/guard, and for those of us who may not be as literate etc, it may cause them problems obtaining the services they need.

More and more 'legalise' has been introduced, and no doubt more and more will come, the bottom line is that only the ones who may not have access to good advocacy will get hurt.

No doubt a contentious subject, and I lower my head below the paraphet in shelter at the missles that may come.
I hope anyone who reads this understands where I am coming from and that they don't think that I am thinking bad of anybody - it's just me expressing how I feel

Michael

 

[Dollit]

You are right Michael - those who manipulate the system for personal gain (whatever the motive) automatically make life harder for everyone else - that's what we've been talking of on the DLA thread. I don't think it's necessarily a fair system but it's the only one we've got.

 

[John A]

I have great difficulty when people appear to use the system.

The mental health industry launched, out of the blue, in my own home, in the year 2000, an unprovoked attack that lasted three days, thus destroying my career and financial stability, by unleashing a chain of consequences that transformed me from an owner of three properties (only two of them mortgaged) earning £1,400 a week into, by December 2006, a landless peasant on benefits faced with homelessness and bankruptcy. In the circumstances, I did not hesitate, in January 2006, to take advantage of the mental health industry's stupidity, in order to get a council flat and, later, income support.

I have no compunction about having used a system that once abused me, in order to avoid homlessness and starvation. You'll find a link to my uploaded Mental Health Assessment in another thread I started, in Hearing Voices. To know all is to forgive all. I don't think you'll want to be harsh towards me for milking the system for a pittance, once you know who I am and what I have had to put up with. I don't set out to make money for myself alone. I set out to maximise the resources available to me to help the entire cummunity of victims similar to myself. A lot of those who benefit from my help regard me as a hero, actually using the word "hero".

Cet animal est tres mechant: Quand on l'attaque, il se defend!

John Allman

 

[Dollit]

There's the big difference between us John - you consider yourself a victim and I never would call myself a victim under any circumstance.

 

[Ashami]

.

I have no compunction about having used a system that once abused meJohn Allman

That's fine John as long as you realise that the 'system' reacts to fraudsters by tightening the reins for everybody, so the vulnerable will ultimately suffer. The more the system is abused the more likely it will eventually close the doors to the very people it was created to protect.

I hope you are prepared to accept responsibility for your part in this.

 

[Ashami]

You'll find a link to my uploaded Mental Health Assessment in another thread I started, in Hearing Voices. John Allman

Can't find the link John. I've been waiting for a reply to my last post in your thread

 

[John A]

There's the big difference between us John - you consider yourself a victim and I never would call myself a victim under any circumstance.

I don't merely "consider" myself a victim. It is beyond dispute that I actually am a victim, although is it fashionable nowadays instead to to use the word "survivor", because some people (without checking the dictionary definition of the V word) think that the word "victim" carries "negative" connotations of helplessness and/or self-pity, whereas I merely use the word factually, not to suggest the presence of a so-called "victim mentality".

If the torts of which I am the victim were justiciable, I would, by now, be entitled to compensation in a sum running to six, seven or perhaps even eight figures.

My life nowadays revolves around my work that benefits other victims. I hope to bring something of the ministry of Jesus, to (inter alia) the persecuted underclass into which providence has demoted me.

It is poetic justice indeed that a small part of my victimisation since the year 2000 should have been at the hands of the "mental health" industry, because when I was 19 and a newly-wed in 1972, I compromised, before I appreciated the true nature of that industry, and for eight months (and to my shame) earned a living working inside that industry, committing human rights abuses myself, God forgive me. I was only obeying orders, but that is no defence of what I did in my youth. I reaped what I sowed with a vengeance when I was 47, but now I befriend the friendless, "binding up the wounds" of other victims, so-to-speak. I am not ashamed of this life-style.

 

[John A]

That's fine John as long as you realise that the 'system' reacts to fraudsters by tightening the reins for everybody, so the vulnerable will ultimately suffer. The more the system is abused the more likely it will eventually close the doors to the very people it was created to protect.

I hope you are prepared to accept responsibility for your part in this.

I am not proposing to commit fraud. I am merely proposing, for "tax" reasons so-to-speak, to postpone becoming the lawful, wedded husband of my girlfriend, because that would harm me, her and other people financially. How are they going to "tighten up" the "system" in response to this? Are they going to start quizzing single people about who are their sexual partners, and recalculating benefits if they admit to being sexually active with somebody with whom they don't share an address and haven't married legally? Be sensible!

 

[Fedup]

mmmmmmmmmmmmm i thought you married because you are so inlove and never want to be apart etc etc............ NOT MONEY !!!!

 

[Dollit]

I don't think John really wants people to answer with their points of view, I think he just wants an audience.