Respect for Private Life, Family and the Right to Marry

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) sets out a list of fundamental rights and freedoms which are believed to be common to all people. The ECHR lists these rights in numbered 'Articles'. Article 8 of the ECHR concerns an individual’s right to respect for their private and family life. Article 12 defines an individual’s right to marry.

If you believe your rights under Article 8 have been violated by a neighbour dispute, you can describe your circumstances using our free Rights Situation Checker.

The majority of the provisions contained in the ECHR became law in the UK in October 2000 when the Human Rights Act came into force.

The Right to Respect for Private and Family Life

Everybody has the right to respect for their private and family life, for their home and for their correspondence. This means that public authorities should take care that their actions do not interfere with these aspects of an individual’s life.

The right to respect for private life is not absolute – the ECHR describes a number of circumstances where the right may be overridden. For example, a public authority may interfere with an individual’s private or family life if they do so in accordance with the law at a time of public emergency, to prevent crime, for public safety or national security reasons, or to protect the rights of somebody else.

Whenever a public authority exercises their powers in a way which may infringe an individual’s right to respect for their private life it must seek to strike a balance between the importance of the individual’s rights and the benefit of their actions.

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The Right to Marry

The ECHR states that all men and women, who have reached the age at which they can legally marry, have the right to get married and to start a family.

This right is limited in that individuals only have the right to get married to the extent that this is allowed by the relevant laws in their own country. Since the Civil Partnership Act 2004 came into force in December 2005 same sex couples have, effectively, had the right to get married – or enter into a civil partnership - according to UK law. They now, therefore, have the same rights under this Article of the ECHR as heterosexual couples.

Your situation may be slightly different. ask a question below ↓ and our editorial team will reply with our advice.

Application of the Right to Respect for Private and Family Life

The right of an individual to live their life in the way they choose is wide-ranging. However, individuals must not exercise this right in such a way that it interferes with other people’s rights.

It should be reiterated that there are numerous circumstances in which a public authority may be entitled to interfere with this right. If it can be shown that it was necessary to interfere with an individual’s right to respect for private life for one of the reasons listed in Article 8, a public authority is unlikely to be found to have breached this right.

Areas of life which may be covered by the right to respect for private and family life include:

• Sexual identity or gender issues
• The right to dress in a particular way
• An individual’s right to have access to official documents which contain information about them
• The right of a family to live together
• The right to enjoy one’s home without being affected by noise or pollution
• The right not to have post, telephone calls or emails interfered with
• The use of CCTV
• A patient who wishes to refuse medical treatment.

Application of the Right to Marry

The right to get married and start a family may have relevance to a number of issues. These include the rights of individuals to adopt children or to have fertility or artificial reproduction treatment. There is unlikely to be an obligation on the state to provide facilities for adoption or free fertility treatment. However, in order to satisfy the duty imposed by this part of the ECHR public authorities must take care to ensure that individuals are not prevented from accessing such services.

The Next Step

Now that you have read through the advice above, you might want to put it into practice. Our Rights Situation Checker lets you describe what has happened and find out which UK human rights protections apply and what you can do. Try it now →