Replace the Marriage Certificate with the Cohabitation Certificate

I came across an article where people who were living together, had families together, but who were not married, had trouble finding a word to describe the person they lived with.  The words for unmarried long term partner seemed inadequate, archaic or both.

Perhaps the problem comes because our societies are legally split into married and not married.  Until recently this was satisfactory because the married outnumbered the unmarried.  But as the number of the unmarried grows, and the small in number but vocal gay community continue to highlight their right to have the same benefits as everyone else, the question of how to define these unmarried couples becomes more important.

In our increasingly diverse society perhaps it is time to acknowledge that marriage is but one of many ways people select to live their lives together.  In societies where married couples stay together longer than the unmarried ones, and raise kids at higher levels than married couples, it might make sense to only provide benefits to married couples.

But that is not the case, in the US, people get married, and then divorce at very high rates and after relatively short periods of time.  This begs the question why a childless couple that gets married at 18 should automatically get benefits from the first day of their marriage, while a couple that never married but who have been together for 40 years and raised a family together would struggle for the same right.

The whole benefits question regardless of if the couple is married or not, leaves out those that never marry.  The truth is that those who never marry, might also be in non romantic relationships where they share a household and perhaps even aid in the raising of a family, examples would be single siblings living together or a parent (single parent, divorcee, or widow) living with an adult child also single and helping to raise the kids of the family member.

You could have two friends that decide to move in together for companionship, and to help pay for expenses.  Especially when kids are involved and if there is sharing of expenses for everything, it is hard to argue that these other types of families, should not have access to the types of benefits that married people have.

So while those who choose to marry should not be penalizes, neither should others that enter into long term commitments with people they love (romantically or platonically), but who never get married.

One solution would be to determine benefits on length of time the couple has been together rather than on marital status, or to have an alternative to the marriage certificate, for those other couples, like a cohabitation certificate where people agree that they will for an extended period of time live together, share their lives, homes and expenses.  Or some combination of both (probably the better solution).

This would support families and couples staying together, rather than getting just married and then perhaps splitting up 1 year later.  Perhaps if they know that their benefits won't kick in for a year, then they might have an incentive to work through their problems early in the relationship.  It would also require fewer changes as societies and demographics change over time.  It would matter less what type of relationships people are living in, but what kinds of relationships people are living in.