That was a friend’s question today as he sent me a Globe article about cohabiting couples who negotiate and sign legally binding contracts to regulate the consequences of their potential breakup. These agreements aren’t pre-nuptial, since the pairs don’t plan to marry, so what shall we call them: peri-nuptial? para-nuptial?
He wrote: This is weird. If you want to go through this much effort, why not just get married? What is it about marriage that causes these people to try to replicate it while vociferously rejecting it?
Here’s a sample of the article, presented in the usual Globean glow of approval that left-liberalism confers on every new manifestation of abnormality:
In just about every way, Deborah Zysman and Dan Gluck have a near-marriage.
Both 26, they have lived together in Cambridge for four years, and they’ve been a couple for nearly twice that long. They share bank accounts and jointly plan to buy a house. With flowers and gourmet meals, each year they honor their ”anniversary,” pegged to their first date.
They are also about to borrow a concept from the annals of modern marriage: They want a prenuptial agreement – without the nuptials.
”Of course, we will each have our own lawyer,” Zysman said, lovingly, to Gluck.
As America’s cohabitation rates soar, live-in couples are increasingly drafting legal documents to clarify their financial arrangements if they split up. While married people can rely on divorce laws, the nation’s 11 million unmarried same-sex or heterosexual couples don’t have a similar rule book to follow.
To fill this legal void, more couples are viewing cohabitation agreements as a smart alternative, a way to offer legal protections for each other – and from each other. And the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in two key rulings recently, found these documents valid and enforceable.
Zysman and Gluck point out that casual lovers don’t put their relationship in writing, so they see their desire for a cohabitation agreement as a sign of their ”serious bonds.” They don’t believe a wedding ceremony is needed to show their commitment to each other.
Did you notice what’s missing — not only in this passage, but in the whole article? Children. As you know, marriage is ordered toward the procreation of children, and if a couple is committed to having none, then they literally cannot marry validly. Maybe some of these couples sense that, and know that what they’re looking for isn’t marriage.
I should note an exception to my statement above. One of the couples cited as an example in the article does “share…two children”. But as you might expect with the Globe, it’s a case of “Heather Has Two Mommies”.