LATs and the Law as It Now Stands

Courts have in fact encountered cases involving LATs, primarily in the context of contests about whether alimony to a previous spouse should be terminated based on cohabitation. In these cases, judges have been devising a series of tests for determining whether a couple is in fact cohabiting or living apart together. This chapter will describe those cases, in the course of which the lives of LAT couples are revealed in more detail. In the absence of any consistent legal treatment, obvious injustices result, such as the denial of palimony suits and terminating alimony set after a long marriage based on a woman’s subsequent LAT relationship, although it involves no financial interdependence at all.

Commuter Marriage and Cohabitation

This chapter discusses commuter marriage and cohabiting couples, describing how the issues involved are both similar to and different from those faced by LATs. It is based primarily on the secondary literature available on this topic but also includes the results of some interviews with current commuting spouses. It concludes with a discussion of the legal treatment of cohabitation that is of relevance to legal reforms for LATs.

Gender Difference in Living Apart Together

This chapter focuses on the attraction of a LAT lifestyle for women, in part based on indications from the social science literature from outside the United States and in part drawing on my interviews of women LATs in the United States and England. There are gender differences in living apart. LAT allows women to maintain their independence without forgoing the benefits of intimate relationships. For some women, who are intensely involved in their work lives, raising children from a previous marriage, or both, LAT offers a way to have a physically and emotionally supportive relationship when cohabitation or marriage would be difficult.

LATs—Who Are They?

This chapter describes a number of LAT couples I interviewed, anonymously, but with enough detail to give a lively sense of them, their concerns, and their lifestyle.

Conclusion

The conclusion briefly summarizes the findings and conclusions above. After reviewing some of the previous chapters, I conclude that the law should be reformed so as to support LATs in their mutual caregiving because this lifestyle, while not for everyone, “allows many to achieve a relationship that is stable, committed, and intimate but also egalitarian, one that is close while allowing considerable independence,” which are combinations that can be difficult to achieve in the modern world.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the topic of living apart together, explaining the LAT phenomenon and why it is important as an example of new lifestyles responding to economic and social conditions in the modern world, introducing the question about appropriate legal treatment of unmarried couples and how it is to be determined, and providing an outline of the chapters to follow.

LATs in the Third Age

This chapter summarizes ways in which LAT is proving to be an attractive lifestyle for couples in the “Third Age,” those 65 and older, who are past the age of childrearing and may have retired from full-time work. It reviews literature about sex and aging and attitudes toward caregiving in elderly couples. LAT appears to be attractive to this group both because it allows them to combine independence with intimate connection and, among other things, to keep their own familiar space, preserve their inheritance for their children, and, in the case of women, protect themselves against gendered divisions of domestic labor characteristic of marriage.

Gay Male Couples and LAT

This chapter discusses ways in which LAT functions differently among same-sex couples, based on interviews with gay couples in New York City. Gay couples, for example, are rarely monogamous. Yet many of the gay LATs are in fact legally married, though continuing to live apart in the same city.

How Should the Law Treat LATs?

Starting from theories about the purposes of family law, this chapter addresses first how to decide what the appropriate legal treatment of any group should be. Focusing on the economic relationships between LAT partners and the caregiving they provide for one another, I argue that the law should support and facilitate LATs’ mutual caretaking—by extending hospital visitation rights to LAT partners, for example, including them within the class of persons eligible for family and medical leave to care for a partner, making it possible for them to cover one another under their health insurance policies, and enabling them to receive pensions and bequests without taxation, just as a spouse would be able to do. I conclude with proposals for legal reform in the legal treatment of LATs.

What Does Social Science Tell Us about LATs?

This chapter surveys the social science literature about LATs available from the United Kingdom, France, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada, and Israel, mining what has been discovered about the numbers of LATs, their lifestyles, economic relationships between the partners, and mutual caregiving.