Uganda: New bill seeks to recognise cohabiting for six months as legal marriage

Ugandan couples who live together for at least six months will be recognised as legally married if a new bill is passed by parliament.

Tororo District Woman MP Sarah Opendi has made the proposal under the Marriage Bill, 2022. She is however yet to table it.

The legislator says she seeks to reform what she calls antiquated marriage law and the need to consolidate piecemeal legal provisions about the institution into one volume.

Opendi terms it "unacceptable and disrespectful" for a man to live with someone’s daughter without fulfilling customary obligations, which include the payment of bride price.

“Why would you want to live with somebody’s daughter without even appreciating the parents? Why?” she said, “Supposing that was your daughter and a man starts producing [children] with her without even alerting the father, would you be happy with it?” she was quoted by the Daily Monitor newspaper as telling parliament.

In her argument, around seven in every 10 couples in Kenya’s western neighbour are cohabiting.

She also dismisses the lack of means to pay the bride price as a reason for delaying or foregoing marriages, saying, “It is not just about wealth.”

Previous attempts by the Ugandan parliament to change the marriage legislation have been unfruitful due to divided opinions on, among others, the definition of marriage, legal protections to parties, property ownership and sharing in the event of divorce.

On the other hand in Kenya, the law states that couples who cohabit with no intention of getting married cannot automatically become a married union until they voluntarily wed.

Additionally, the Matrimonial Property Act dictates that ownership of matrimonial property vests in the spouses according to the contribution of either spouse towards its acquisition, and shall be divided between the spouses if they divorce or their marriage is otherwise dissolved.

A marriage party must however prove their contribution to the matrimonial property to determine they share upon divorce.