Legal Treatment of Cohabitation in the United States*

Bowman, Cynthia Grant

doi:10.1111/j.0265-8240.2004.00165.x

Cited by 29 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In several states, couples that enter civil unions or domestic partnerships receive some of the benefits of marriage, and most states recognize explicit contracts between cohabitants. But few cohabiting couples make written contracts, the terms and even the existence of oral contracts are often difficult to prove, and court rulings about the enforceability of such contracts are inconsistent (Bowman 2004, 2010). Common-law marriage, which requires that couples hold themselves out as married, has all but disappeared with the increasing social acceptability of cohabitation and has been abolished by statute in most states (Waggoner 2015).…”

Section: Changing Gender Roles Marital Surplus and Investments In Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family Inequality: Diverging Patterns in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing

Lundberg

Pollak

Stearns

2016

Journal of Economic Perspectives

232

153

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Popular discussions of changes in American families over the past 60 years have revolved around the “retreat from marriage.” Concern has focused on increasing levels of nonmarital childbearing, as well as falling marriage rates that stem from both increases in the age at first marriage and greater marital instability. Often lost in these discussions is the fact that the decline of marriage has coincided with a rise in cohabitation. Many “single” Americans now live with a domestic partner and a substantial fraction of “single” mothers are cohabiting, often with the child's father. The share of women who have ever cohabited has nearly doubled over the past 25 years, and the majority of nonmarital births now occur to cohabiting rather than to unpartnered mothers at all levels of education. The emergence of cohabitation as an alternative to marriage has been a key feature of the post–World War II transformation of the American family. These changes in the patterns and trajectories of family structure have a strong socioeconomic gradient. The important divide is between college graduates and others: individuals who have attended college but do not have a four-year degree have family patterns and trajectories that are very similar to those of high school graduates.

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Section: Changing Gender Roles Marital Surplus and Investments In Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family Inequality: Diverging Patterns in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing

Lundberg

Pollak

Stearns

2016

Journal of Economic Perspectives

232

153

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show abstract

“…Steven Nock described cohabitation as an "incomplete institution" that is "not yet governed by strong consensual norms or formal laws" (Nock 1995, p. 74). In recent years many western countries have introduced laws and policies that recognize cohabitation, or even place it on an equal footing with marriage in some respects or under certain conditions (Bowman 2004;Bradley 2001;Perelli-Harris and Gassen 2012).…”

Section: Literature Overview: Freedom In Cohabitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free to stay, free to leave: Insights from Poland into the meaning of cohabitation

Mynarska¹,

Baranowska-Rataj²,

Matysiak³

2014

DemRes

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“…Inefficiencies may arise in relationships due to lack of access to a commitment technology. 4 However, more importantly, individuals can choose the degree of commitment they have access to in their relationship, through choosing between marriage and cohabitation. These choices depend on their observable and unobservable characteristics, the characteristics of their potential matches, the quality of their match, as well as preferences and the home production technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marriage and cohabitation

2008

Choice Reviews Online

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Despite the large occurrence of cohabitation and its strong link to important behavioral outcomes, it has received little attention in the literature. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to document the labor supply, housework hours, and fertility patterns of cohabiting partners. The data suggests that in comparison to marriage, cohabitation is associated with a lower degree of household specialization, higher relationship instability, and greater degree of positive assortative mating. We develop and estimate a dynamic model of household formation and dissolution, fertility and labor supply and use the estimated model to perform policy experiments that investigate the welfare implications of different institutional arrangements regarding divorce regulations. In a dynamic model of the household with limited commitment, marriage leads to equilibrium outcomes that are closer to the efficient allocation when there are gains from specialization. On the other hand, cohabitation enables partners to insure themselves against uncertainty regarding the match quality of the relationship. Each match has different gains from either living arrangement, depending on their observable characteristics, and match quality. Cohabitation provides a tradeoff between the advantages and disadvantages of getting married and remaining single. Our goal is to use the estimated model to assess the welfare implications of inefficiencies that may arise in co-residential relationships due to lack of commitment. JEL Classification Code: J12, J16, J31, J61

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Legal Treatment of Cohabitation in the United States*

Cited by 29 publications

References 7 publications

Family Inequality: Diverging Patterns in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing

Family Inequality: Diverging Patterns in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing

Free to stay, free to leave: Insights from Poland into the meaning of cohabitation

Marriage and cohabitation

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