COHABITATION

Cohibitation is a living arrangement in which an unmarried couple live together in a long-term relationship that resembles a marriage.

Couples cohabit rather than marrying for a variety of reasons. They may want to test their compatibility before they commit to a legal union. They may want to maintain their single status for financial reasons. In some cases, such as those involving gay or lesbian couples, or individuals already married to another person, the law does not allow them to marry. In others, the partners may feel that marriage is unnecessary. Whatever the reasons, between 1970 and 1990, the number of couples living together outside of marriage quadrupled, from 523,000 to nearly 3 million. These couples face some of the same legal issues as married people, as well as some their married friends never need to consider.

 

In most places, it is legal for unmarried people to live together, although some zoning laws prohibit more than three unrelated people from inhabiting a house or apartment. A few states still prohibit fornication, or sexual relations between an unmarried man and woman, but such laws are no longer enforced. Some states also prohibit sodomy, which includes sexual relations between people of the same sex. Although anti-sodomy laws are rarely enforced against consenting adults acting in the privacy of their homes, a 1986 Supreme Court case proved that such laws can be. In Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 106 S. Ct. 2841, 92 L. Ed. 2d 140, the Court held that private, consensual homosexual acts are not protected by the right to privacy and that laws prohibiting such conduct are constitutional.

The law traditionally has been biased in favor of marriage. Public policy supports marriage as necessary to the stability of the family, the basic societal unit. To preserve and encourage marriage, the law reserves many rights and privileges to married persons. Cohabitation carries none of those rights and privileges. It has been said that cohabitation has all the headaches of marriage without any of the benefits. Cohabiting couples have little guidance as to their legal rights in such areas as property ownership, responsibility for debts, custody, access to health care and other benefits, and survivorship.