Growing Number Who Cohabitate Entering Legal Agreements

Marriage isn’t for everybody, but even some who simply are not the marrying kind fall in love.

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And that brings up, not the pre-nup but what’s being termed the “no-nup,” an often-detailed legal agreement between people who want to live together, but without benefit of clergy. That’s a growing sector of society, according to an article this past summer in The New York Times.

“With more couples choosing to live together without marrying — the Census Bureau estimates that more than eight million couples were cohabiting in the United States in 2013, up from five million in 2006 — the potential pool of clients for these types of agreements is far from small,” according to the story.

“Maria Cognetti, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, said most of the clients who ask for a cohabitation agreement have gone through marriage and divorce, and are in no hurry to revisit the travails of that journey.

“They don’t want to get remarried, but they want the protection a pre-nup would provide,” Cognetti, a divorce lawyer in Camp Hill, Pa., told The Times.

While looking to the possibility of breaking up when first moving in might seem like the ultimate romance-chiller, “prudence can trump emotion even in the most durable of unions,” the article pointed out.