Paul Shoesmith, the partner of Janet Cowden, was killed in the Isle of Man’s TT races two years ago after his tyre burst. The couple, who had two young boys, had been together for five years. They were engaged but had been too busy to organise a wedding.
Shoesmith’s death at the age of 50 left Cowden bereft, but without any time for mourning as she attempted to reorganise her family life and sort out her finances.
“Receiving a widowed parent’s allowance would have taken the pressure off,” she said. “When you lose a partner, you have all the emotional struggles, but for cohabitees, emotions can’t come first.
“You have to sort out how you are going to cope. I haven’t been able to focus on losing Paul and grieve because there have been so many other things to arrange.”
Cowden, now 37, is a qualified social worker and originally from Northern Ireland. She now lives in Manchester with her four and five-year-old sons; one has been diagnosed with autism and needs additional support.
“I was dependent on Paul but his bank accounts were frozen, so I had to get some kind of benefits for myself and the kids,” she recalled. “I didn’t know how I was going to survive. At a jobseeker’s interview I burst into tears.”
As a member of the support organisation Way, Cowden was told that a marriage certificate was needed to claim widowed parent’s allowance. “I thought there was no point in filling in forms then, but I will apply for it now,” she said.
“What Siobhan McLaughlin has achieved is phenomenal. For me, it’s more about the recognition; we have been treated as second-class citizens.
“When Paul died, I felt that [our relationship] was worthless in the eye of the law simply because we didn’t have a piece of paper.”
