Legal reforms appropriate for cohabitants and LATs

• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Author: Cynthia Grant Bowman
• Date: 01 January 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12686

SPECIAL FEATURE

Legal reforms appropriate for cohabitants

and LATs

Cynthia Grant Bowman

Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Law, Cornell

Law School, Ithaca, New York, USA

Correspondence

Cynthia Grant Bowman, Dorothea S. Clarke

Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Ithaca,

NY USA.

Email: cgb28@cornell.edu

Abstract

Cohabitants and LATs (couples who “live apart together”)

do not fit the traditional categories and rules of our family

law system. This article describes what we know about both

cohabitants and LATs in the U.S., compares the two institu-

tions, and makes recommendations about legal reforms with

respect to each. For cohabitants the reforms would assimi-

late cohabiting couples to marriage after the passage of time,

based on the evidence of their economic interdependence

and the probability that there are children in their house-

holds. As to LATs, the reforms proposed are limited to those

that would support the caretaking functions LATs perform

for each other, resultingin benefits to society as a whole.

KEYWORDS

alimony, children, cohabitation, couples living apart, LATs, legal

reform, nonmarriage, palimony, unmarried couples

Key points for the family court community

•With only around half of Americans living in married

couples, cohabitation has now established itself as an

alternative family form.

•Cohabitants are economically interdependent, and many

are raising children in their households.

•About 10% of adult Americans, called LATs, live in

committed couples but do not share a residence.

•LATs prize their economic independence of one another

but provide major caretaking of their partners, especially

in illness.

DOI: 10.1111/fcre.12686

© 2022 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.

102 Family Court Rev. 2023;61:102–115.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fcre