Writing for the Institute for Family Studies, Robert VerBruggen examines a report on the effects of cohabitation law on couple behaviour in Canada. The report is entitled More or Less Unmarried. The Impact of Legal Settings of Cohabitation on Labour Market Outcomes.
VerBruggen outlines that while cohabitating couples do not have much legal protection in America, the situation is quite different in Canada:
“After one year, cohabitation is considered a legal status under Canadian law and is reported on tax returns. Cohabiters are eligible for their partners’ car insurance and pension plans. And between 1972 and 1999, every province except Quebec enacted laws allowing some cohabiters to claim alimony after a break-up. Three provinces have taken a further step, considering cohabiting relationships to be equal to marriages after a certain period of time, including when it comes to dividing up property after a breakup.”
Given this reality, the study looks to answer the following: When the alimony and property-division rules change, do couples change their behavior in response? And how?
It finds that:
- When cohabitation becomes more legally similar to marriage, the economic “specialization” we often see within marriage — where one partner, typically the man, works more while the other partner does more at home — becomes more likely to happen to cohabiters as well.
- Cohabitation became more stable in the marriage regime, with cohabiting couples less likely to break up or formally get married. Couples also became less likely to cohabit, rather than marrying outright, to begin with.
VerBruggen writes that three key takeaways emerge from this study:
- It reinforces the finding that marriage — and marriage-like protections — turns wealth into collateral.
- Cohabitation did not tend to make the sexes more equal in the workplace.
- The options the government makes available to cohabitating couples after a breakup are extremely powerful, which has the practical effect of making cohabitation less attractive.
