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วารสารกฎหมาย ศาลอุทธรณ์คดีชำานัญพิเศษ

to pay. Or one partner may support the whole household, as was the case in traditional
marriages in the past.

Some have claimed that cohabitants remain financially independent because

they have no legally enforceable claims on one another. However, more recent studies
report that the majority of cohabitants function as an economic unit, even if they maintain
separate bank accounts (as many married couples do as well). Indeed, a majority of

both cohabiting and married couples in the U.S. maintain joint finances. About 55% of
cohabitants pool their income, and cohabitants behave no differently from married

couples as to income-sharing if they have children. In short, contrary to the assumptions
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of many, most cohabitants are economically interdependent.

The impact of this fact on women is very important. Women gain a virtually
identical income premium whether they cohabit or marry: a gain of roughly 55%
in needs-adjusted family income. They are thus faced with major problems when
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cohabiting unions dissolve after more than a few years or after the birth of a child.
2. Duration of cohabiting unions

Another charge levelled against cohabitants is that their unions are short in

duration and thus not deserving of legal recognition. It is true that some cohabitants do
not stay together as long as married couples do; this is especially true, as noted above,
for very young couples who live together. But many cohabitants stay together for very

long periods, comparable to married couples (married unions last about eight years on
average). These facts should be taken into account in designing any legal regime
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governing cohabitation.
Very early (1989) data estimated that cohabitants stayed together on average
1.5 years, but later (1995) data reported that four in ten were still together after

11 See, e.g., Carolyn Vogler, et al., Managing Money in New Heterosexual Forms of Intimate
Relationships, 37 Journal of Socio-Economics 552, 567 (Table 11) (2008).
12 Audrey Light, Gender Differences in the Marriage and Cohabitation Income Premium, 41 Demography
263, 279 (2004).
13 U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and
Divorces 9 (2001) (Table 6), https://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-97.pdf.

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