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A great deal of what is written about domestic abuse assumes a marriage, and women who are not married frequently conclude that none of it applies to them, that nobody will take it seriously, and that there is nothing to be done.

Two different things are true here and it is important not to blur them. Protection from violence does not depend on marriage. Financial and property claims very often do.

Protection does not depend on marriage

Assault, threats, unlawful detention, harassment, stalking and sexual violence are criminal regardless of the relationship between the people involved. Nothing about a criminal complaint requires you to be married to him.

The VAPP Act is drafted in terms of persons rather than spouses, and it addresses conduct in domestic and other relationships. Protection orders are available in respect of a person, and a court can order somebody to stay away from your home, your workplace and your school.

So if what you need is for it to stop, being unmarried does not weaken your position. It is worth saying that plainly, because women in this situation are routinely told the opposite by people with no basis for it.

Where being unmarried does matter

Money and property, and this is where the real gap is.

Nigerian law does not have a general regime giving cohabiting partners the financial rights that spouses have. There is no maintenance claim for yourself simply by virtue of having lived with somebody. Property questions are decided on ordinary principles of ownership and contribution rather than on any matrimonial jurisdiction.

That means the practical protection is evidence. If you contributed to a property, a business or a vehicle, what matters is what you can prove — transfers, receipts, records, messages in which he acknowledges it. What contribution evidence looks like applies directly, and it matters more here than in a marriage.

The practical advice follows from that: do not put things in his name, keep your own records, and be careful about contributing heavily to something you have no documented interest in.

Children are a separate question

This is the one that causes the most fear and the most misinformation.

A father’s duty to maintain his child does not depend on marriage to the mother. A child’s rights do not depend on the parents’ marital status. And custody is decided on the welfare of the child rather than on whether there was a wedding.

Where paternity is disputed or acknowledgement is being withheld, that is a specific legal problem with a specific answer, and it is worth advice early rather than late. Being unmarried does not remove a child’s entitlement to be maintained. How maintenance works is set out separately.

The specific difficulties

Not legal ones, mostly. Practical and social ones, and they are real.

• Being taken less seriously. At a police station, in a family, sometimes by services. It should not happen and it does.
• Blame. That you should not have been living with him, that you brought it on yourself. This is the reason a great many women in this position tell nobody at all.
• Housing. Where the place is in his name and there is no marriage, leaving frequently means leaving with nothing and no claim to it.
• Family. Parents who disapproved of the relationship may be a difficult refuge, and some women stay to avoid admitting the relationship failed.
• Secret relationships. Where nobody knew, there is no one to tell, and disclosure means two revelations at once.
• Being told to marry him as the solution, which is advice women in this position receive constantly and which is not a safety plan.

What to do

1. Report violence as violence. Do not lead with the relationship status and do not let it become the subject. An assault is an assault.
2. Ask about a protection order. It is available in respect of a person and it is one of the more useful things here, since there is no divorce process to run alongside it.
3. Get your name on things, or get out of them. A tenancy, a bank account, a vehicle, a business. Where you cannot, keep the evidence of what you contributed.
4. Deal with paternity properly if there are children, before there is a dispute rather than during one.
5. Do not move in to solve a problem. Cohabiting because of pressure, money or a pregnancy narrows your options considerably.
6. Tell one person, even where the relationship is not known about. This is the hardest step for women in secret relationships and the most important.

If it is an engagement

A specific and common situation: bride price has been paid, the traditional rites are done, the wedding is planned, and it has already become frightening.

There is enormous pressure to continue, because money has been spent, families have committed and calling it off is treated as a disgrace. Two things are worth saying. Whatever has been paid or promised is a financial question between families, and it does not oblige you to marry anybody. And behaviour before a marriage does not improve after it — the pattern established during an engagement is the pattern.

What to look for before you marry him is written for exactly this point, and it is a considerably better moment to act than after the wedding.

What we do

The same as for anybody. Nobody here will ask whether you were married before deciding whether to help, and nobody will suggest that marrying him would resolve it.

Legal advice, a protection order, somewhere to stay, help with a tenancy, and work. The support does not turn on your marital status, and if you have been told by anybody that it does, they were wrong.

Questions people ask

If you need help now

If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, email us at hello@healbridge.org, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.