Same-sex partners in Hungary<br> Cohabitation and registered partnership

Abstract

Same-sex partners cannot enter into marriage according to current Hungarian law. However, they can live together in unmarried cohabitation, which does have certain limited legal consequences for example in the field of civil law. In December 2007, the Hungarian Parliament approved the Act on Registered Partnership, which will enter into force in January 2009. Registered partnership, being a new institution in Hungarian Law, grants almost the all the rights of marriage to both same-sex and different-sex couples. The property consequences will be identical, but registered partners will neither be able to bear each other’s surname nor jointly adopt a child. This submission offers a survey of the rules on cohabitation as well as the rules of the new Registered Partnership Act, taking into account the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the stages of the codification process of the new Civil Code relevant to the status of homosexuals.