Advice about Marriage, Transition and Civil Partnership in the UK

Question: Hopefully you can help me as I’ve been looking around for some help and advice about a particular issue which affects my family. My son has been openly cross dressing for a number of years throughout his teens and twenties. He met a lovely young lady and they got married so we assumed he’d gotten over this. His wife knew about all this before they got married and never had a problem.

My son has now decided after talking to his wife that he should like to have the gender change surgery but remained together. They are happy with being married and would like to remain so by automatically converting their marriage certificate to a Civil Partnership. However, I’m sure the law doesn’t make things so easy for couples in their situation, so is it as simple as changing the certificates or is it more complicated than that?

Answer: Unfortunately as you may well have expected, the law doesn’t allow for them to be simply switched over. So they would need to apply for a divorce, before entering into the civil partnership. When your son applies for his GRC, his marriage will get dissolved. Then he will have to go through the whole process of getting a Civil Partnership right from the beginning.

However, this does not have to be seen as a negative as I know of some couples who have made a huge celebration out of the situation and seen it as an opportunity to celebrate the next step in their union together.

Consult Hylton-Potts, the experts who offer fixed fees, and give excellent value.

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