• 19
  • July
    2010

If you end up needing the services of an experienced divorce attorney, will that decision have been influenced by whether your marriage was preceded by a period of unmarried cohabitation?

Answers among marriage researchers vary, and there is far from a consistent response, but one thing is certain: Study of the "cohabitation effect" is currently in vogue, with interesting findings that range across a wide spectrum.

It has long been stated by experts that many Americans seek to "test" their marriage beforehand by living together for a period of time as single partners. The number that do so is not stated with certainty, but it is well established that more than 60 percent of American couples do cohabit prior to marriage.

What effect does that subsequently have on a marriage? According to a recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics, both men and women who cohabit prior to engagement make it to the 10th year of marriage far less often than couples who either do not cohabit at all or do so only after becoming engaged first.

Scott Stanley, a University of Denver researcher, blames "inertia" that is induced in a cohabiting relationship for a higher rate of marriage failure subsequently. Stanley says that couples living together gather "constraints" - shared possessions and attachments - that essentially push them toward marriage when they might otherwise forgo it. "It's not that living together made your relationship crappier," says Stanley. "It's that it made it difficult to get out of a crappy relationship."

Jay Teachman, a sociology professor at Western Washington University, states that factors other than cohabitation - especially age and educational attainments - are more important as predictors of marriage success.

Related Resource: chicagotribune.com "Living together, loving together, divorcing together?" July 6, 2010