It is becoming more and more common for people to live together on a long term basis, without getting married.

    One reason people give for not getting married is that they have been told that it is easier to split apart if they are not married.  This is not usually true.

    It may be true for unmarried couples who have no children, no pensions, no ownership interest in a home, no joint lease, no joint debts, and no significant assets.  “Split the CDs, and go your separate ways” can work well in these situations.

    If you have been together for even a relatively brief time, however, things become less clear.

    You may appear jointly on a year long lease.  This means each of you has a right to be in the apartment or house.  And to have friends over.  It also means that each of you has a duty to pay the full rent, whether or not the other makes any contribution.  And it means that the landlord will go after who ever he thinks is most likely to pay - whether that person is living in the dwelling anymore or not.

    One of you may have bought all the groceries and paid all the utilities, while the other bought the furniture, or even a car.  Or one of you may have put the other through school.

    It gets even more complicated when one or both of you have contemplated a medium or long term future together.

    Was it your intention just to live together?  How about the car that you paid for during the relationship?  What was the intent regarding the other car that you just bought, on time, with both of you signing the debt paperwork?  Who will get that?  Who will have to pay for it?

    What about if one of you owned a business that did very well, while the other worked small jobs that supported the family during the start up of the business, or got the business through a lean period?  What if, after the business was well started, the other person stayed home and kept house?  Does it make a difference if this homemaking supported the business, either by supporting the business owner, or by providing hospitality to major clients?

    Does it make a difference if you held yourselves out as husband and wife?

    Does it make a difference if you registered with your employer as domestic partners, so that the employer’s health insurance could cover both of you?  Does it make a difference if neither one had an employer who offers this benefit?

    Does it make a difference if you had children?

    To a large extent, all of these questions are answered if you are married.

    The idea that it is simpler to extricate yourself from a relationship if you just do not marry is quite simply not true.

    The results of a divorce are generally relatively predictable, at least when compared to the results of a dissolution of an unregistered domestic partnership.

    As has been remarked by the appeals courts, about the only thing we can say about most unregistered domestic partnerships is that the partners chose not to marry.

    This makes the dissolution of an unregistered domestic partnership (i.e. breaking up) more complex, often more expensive, and far less predictable than a divorce would be.

    One way that a degree of predictability can be introduced into such a situation is to enter into a domestic partnership agreement.

    Please see the separately posted article for a discussion of formal domestic partnership agreements.