Amanda Docherty: Modern love

When two of my closest friends recently told me they were having a baby I was over the moon for them. I was chatting to my mum about it and she asked me if they were married yet or whether they were planning to get married. They weren't but I couldn't understand why it mattered. That same week there was a landmark court ruling in the case of a mother of four who was denied bereavement benefits because she had not been married. After losing her partner to cancer, Siobhan McLaughlin was told that legally she and her children were not entitled to financial help because they had never tied t...