Sign here, honey
The ins and outs of prenups for the shacked-up
BY MAURA KELLY
Between 2009 and 2010 alone, the number of couples living together out of wedlock leaped 13 percent, from 6.7 million to 7.5 million — a change so big that the Census Bureau wondered at first if it had made an accounting error. (Cohabitation already had increased more than tenfold between 1960 and 2005.) Since unemployment was higher among newly formed couples in 2010 than in 2009, the increase seems to have been precipitated by cash-flow concerns, at least in part. In other words, people weren't moving in together for love so much as for affordable housing.
Which means that, in the interest of household harmony, the age of the cohabitation prenup has arrived.
So-called "dating prenups" are already popular among celebrities: After January 2010 gossip surfaced about how Brad and Angie had visited a "family lawyer," word spread that their attorney had simply been drawing up a cohabitation agreement. And TMZ.com has evidence of the loser-take-nothing contract that Mel Gibson got his baby mama to sign.
Hollywood couples cover all sorts of wacky things in their cohabs. Gibson got his lady to confirm, in writing, "that Mel has not asked her to reduce or give up career opportunities." The clients of Los Angeles lawyer Robert Nachshin, who have included studio heads, screenwriters and film stars, have delineated what percentage of a collaborative work (like an unrecorded song or an unsold screenplay) each partner owns. For mere earthlings, more mundane stipulations will probably suffice, but it’s nonetheless crucial to hammer out who will pay for what long before you call U-Haul — especially if you’re shacking up because one of you ran out of savings or lost your job. Money matters can not only complicate a breakup, but cause one.
These things only get harder to chat about after a pattern has been established — and after you've worked up some negative feelings for the cheapskate you live with. Much as you negotiate a salary before, not after, you start a job, the soon-to-shack-up should hammer out monetary details ahead of time.
What should you mention? Whatever seems necessary. You could spell out that you entered the relationship with a set of Eames chairs, all the Criterion Collection DVDs ever issued, and 500 shares in Apple — and that you’re taking it all with you if the relationship tanks. You might specify how each one of you will contribute to your cleaning lady's biweekly services, or bills related to the pet you co-own. Or you could simply discuss the details of basic expenses, shared bank accounts and pre-existing debt. Cohabitation agreements themselves don’t have to be pricey; sites like LawDepot.com offer templates that will guide you through the process for free.
Some people argue that such legal formalities dull the romance … but what might be more of a turnoff is having to unexpectedly support someone who quit his job a week after moving into your place, only to sit on your couch in his boxers eating Pringles and watching "Two and a Half Men" reruns all day. And actual prenups for actual marriages — which help prepare you for the possibility of divorcing a person you’ve promised to stand by and support for the rest of your life before you’ve even walked down the aisle — are more inherently oxymoronic.
Of course, marriage itself is a contractual agreement — one that gives spouses certain legal protections against each other. "For married people, there are default legal provisions as to how to divide property after death or divorce," says Cambridge, Mass., lawyer Steven J.J. Weisman, who teaches a nontraditional families course at Bentley University. "But the law is difficult to predict when it comes to an unmarried couple’s separation." Which is to say that unlike marital partners, co-habitators would have no legal recourse in the case of a messy split — unless they have proof of a pre-existing agreement.
Will dating prenups make marriage obsolete? Doubtful, especially when you consider that cohabitation itself sure hasn’t: Americans marry more than people in other countries, as Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin argued in his recent book, "The Marriage-Go-Round" (even if they also have more live-in partners and divorce more, too). Hopefully what cohabitation agreements will help to phase out is the tendency to irresponsibly make commitments — financial and otherwise — we can't keep.
Maura Kelly is co-writing a book called “Much Ado About Loving,” to be published in February 2012.
Credit: The Daily (www.thedaily.com)
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