Transsexual husband annuls marriage and enters into civil partnership with wife to keep pension benefits

Martin Packer had to annul his marriage to Linda so he could be legally recognised as a woman after a sex change.

This left both of them facing a financial blow as they would have had to forfeit certain tax and pension rights.

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So the former Mr Packer, now known as Emma Martin, decided to take part in the civil ceremony with his ex-wife despite admitting they are not in a sexual relationship.

Miss Martin, 60, said: "We are, and always have been, soulmates and best friends ever since 1977 when we got married.

"But, to get my gender recognition certificate, we had to get our marriage annulled.

"When that happened we would have been liable for inheritance tax but it also messed up life insurance and pension rights.

"The simplest thing would have been if we could have had a transfer from a marriage to a civil partnership but that wasn't possible and it was such a farce to get all the paperwork sorted out.

"From the outside it looks like we are in a relationship and Linda doesn't really like that because we are not."

The couple, who live in Little Downham, near Ely in Cambridgeshire, married in December 1977 and never had children.

Mr Packer, an IT consultant, admitted that he had been troubled about his identity since he was four. He told his wife he wanted to change sex in 1998.

Around £20,000 of treatments including electrolysis and hormone therapy were followed by gender reassignment surgery.

Under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, it was originally planned that marriages which survived one partner having a sex change would be allowed to continue but this was later dropped.

Miss Martin therefore had to choose between annulling her marriage to be legally recognised as a woman or preserving her marriage but remaining a man in the eyes of the law.

She chose the former and the couple took part in the civil ceremony last year, a few days after they were granted a decree absolute.

Just over 18,000 same-sex couples married in the 12 months after gay weddings were introduced in December 2005. The number settled to around half that figure last year. It is not known how many involve couples wanting to stay together - or needing to for financial reasons - after one has had a sex change.

But a transgender pressure group, the Beaumont Society, yesterday said it was the only option available to those wanting to preserve married couples' financial benefits.

Spokesman Tamara Wilding accused the law of lagging behind social changes, saying: "It is not fair that people in this situation should have to annul their marriage and then enter a civil partnership.

"The law needs tidying up. It would be easy to put an amendment in the civil partnership law to allow people who have gone through gender-reassignment, and want that to be recognised, to have the status of their relationship continued."

However barrister Karen Brody, an expert in matrimonial finance, argued there was no need for a change in the law. "I know it seems a bit cumbersome to divorce then come together as civil partners but it's good the law recognises that and it shows it's flexible," she said.

• This week at the European Court of Human Rights, two elderly sisters lost their fight over inheritance tax.

Joyce and Sybil Burden, aged 90 and 82, have lived together throughout their lives and wanted the same tax rights as married couples and civil partners.

But when one of them dies, the other will have to sell their fourbedroom house in Marlborough, Wiltshire, to meet an inheritance tax bill of more than £50,000.