Living Together

Chapter 1
Living Together: The Legal Companion for Unmarried Couples

Living together has never been more popular. According to the 2010 Census data, over 7.5 million unmarried couples live together (which translates into 15 million people). This is a 25% increase over the 2000 figures, which was a whopping 138% increase since 1990. More than 40% of unmarried households have children. Cohabitors also are an older crowd now, and the number of cohabiting seniors tripled since 1990 and is continuing to rise. The average American spends the majority of his or her life unmarried.

If you are part of an unmarried couple living together, it’s probably comforting to know that you are far from alone. However, this doesn’t mean that you can ignore how the law affects your relationship, especially if you are buying a house together.

This book will help. It explains the wide range of legal and practical rules that affect opposite-sex unmarried couples living together—from sharing money and property (contract law) to owning a house together (real estate law) or sharing an apartment (landlord-tenant law) to having a child with your partner (family law) to writing a will (estate planning).

Same-sex couples. If you are part of a gay or lesbian couple living together, see the Nolo books A Legal Guide for Lesbian & Gay Couples and Making It Legal: A Guide to Same-Sex Marriage, Domestic Partnerships and Civil Unions, both by Frederick Hertz and Emily Doskow, available at www.nolo.com.

Legal rules that affect unmarried couples living together. When you understand the law, you and your partner can make informed decisions about how to structure your life, finances, property ownership, and family relationships to best meet your needs. Failing to learn about the law and take measures to protect yourself and your partner can have negative consequences. The special rules governing married couples (such as those relating to property ownership, divorce, and inheritance rights, to name a few) don’t apply to unmarried couples. In order to compensate for this, you’ll have to do some extra work. For example, you may want to write a will to ensure that your partner gets your property when you die, sign paternity statements to ensure that a father’s parental rights are preserved, or create a “living together contract” to avoid protracted court battles over property if you split up. These burdens apply to couples who are cohabiting as a prelude to marriage, as well as to those who view their arrangement as a long-term alternative to marriage.

Important legal agreements and forms. To help you, we provide over a dozen written documents that unmarried couples can use to spell out their individual legal and financial arrangements, and detailed discussions of relevant legal forms, including:

living together contracts regarding your money and property—whether you want to keep everything separate, pool all assets, or something in between (such as share ownership of a car)

house ownership agreements—whether you’re sharing costs and ownership equally or not

basic wills and estate planning forms

parenting agreements, paternity statements, and other documents relating to children you have together (or bring into your relationship from a previous marriage), and

property settlement agreements for use in the event you separate.

Each form is easy to customize and has complete instructions, and there are filled-in samples in the text. You’ll find downloadable copies of the forms on the companion page for this book on the Nolo website (see below for details).

What’s in a Name?

One of the common issues faced by unmarried couples is how to introduce each other in a way that reflects the importance of your relationship—boyfriend/girlfriend, special friend, significant other, lover, or even POSSLQ (Person of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters, an earlier Census Bureau phrase for heterosexual couples who live together without getting married)—the choice is yours. Because “partner” is one of the most commonly used and neutral terms, we use it throughout this book to refer to one member of an unmarried couple.

We believe that most unmarried couples can safely and easily master the majority of legal rules that affect them. However, it’s also true that an experienced lawyer’s advice can be invaluable when it comes to dealing with more complicated situations. We’ll point out how and when a lawyer’s expertise can be helpful—for example, if one of you has children or substantial assets, or you’re dealing with complicated estate planning.

Why live together and not get married. There are many reasons why people choose to live together without getting married. Some don’t see the need for the state’s approval of their commitment to each other. Many couples view it as a trial period before marriage. Some avoid marriage because they have gone through a messy divorce. Many people, especially in expensive urban areas with high unemployment rates, often live with partners in order to reduce housing costs.

Special concerns of seniors. The fast-increasing number of unmarried couples over age 45 that live together—over one-fifth of all unmarried couples fall into this category—often have financial and family concerns that come into play. For example, by not marrying they don’t become legally obligated for their partner’s medical treatment, and they reduce the risk of paying tax on Social Security benefits. And by not marrying, many avoid tricky inheritance issues if one or both partners have adult children from a previous marriage or own substantial assets.

One of the most common reasons older couples choose to live together instead of marrying is to avoid joint liability for debts, especially for long-term care or medical bills. Staying unmarried also enables each partner to qualify individually for public benefits, such as Medicaid, without draining the other partner’s resources. There are detailed rules about how this must be structured to avoid inadvertent triggering of joint liability, so if you are considering such a strategy, consult with an attorney specializing in elder law before you make any big decisions.

Also, changing social attitudes and values have made living together less of a stigma; living together is not considered as rare (or immoral) as it was 30 or more years ago when the first edition of this book was published. In fact, the American Law Institute, an influential organization of lawyers, judges, and legal scholars, recently recommended sweeping changes in family law, including recommending that family courts and state lawmakers begin to treat living together relationships more like marriage—even recommending that laws provide for alimony-like payments when unmarried couples split up after a long time together. To date, Washington State is the only state that has followed this recommendation.

And for some folks, staying unmarried allows them to live together without making a major legal or social commitment, which is psychologically preferable for one or both partners. As has been well documented, getting married doesn’t mean the relationship will last forever, but that’s how it feels to many partners—and it’s a feeling that they don’t feel entirely comfortable about. Older partners may be concerned about the reactions of their friends and children, and they may prefer to cohabit informally rather than suggest to anyone that their new relationship is as important as their former marriage was. And, not surprisingly, the reasons folks give for staying unmarried aren’t often the full story.

Whatever your reasons for not marrying, this book arms you with information to tackle most of the legal issues that arise during unmarried partnerships, including managing your financial affairs better, protecting your assets, buying a house or other property together, having or coparenting children and addressing the concerns of your adult children, planning for your death, and dealing with a breakup.

Check out the Alternatives to Marriage Project. This national organization that provides resources, support, and advocacy for unmarried people living together. For more information, see the ATMP website at www.unmarried.org.