Family Law

The Changing Legal Regulation of Cohabitation From Fornicators to Family, 1600–2010

By Rebecca Probert
Cambridge University Press September 2012

Specifications

ISBN-13
9781107020849
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publication
September 2012
Format
Hardback , 320 pages
Jurisdiction
International ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

This book has three key aims: first, to show how the legal treatment of cohabiting couples has changed over the past four centuries, from punishment as fornicators in the seventeenth century to eventual acceptance as family in the late twentieth; second, to chart how the language used to refer to cohabitation has changed over time and how different terms influenced policy debates and public perceptions; and, third, to estimate the extent of cohabitation in earlier centuries. To achieve this it draws on hundreds of reported and unreported cases as well as legislation, policy papers and debates in Parliament; thousands of newspaper reports and magazine articles; and innovative cohort studies that provide new and more reliable evidence as to the incidence (or rather the rarity) of cohabitation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. It concludes with a consideration of the relationship between legal regulation and social trends.

• A comprehensive overview of the law's treatment of cohabiting couples in this period

• Provides new data on the extent of cohabitation before the twentieth century using newly available electronic resources

• Helps readers understand terminology and reflects changing attitudes to cohabitation

Table of Contents

List of figures
x
Acknowledgements
xi
1       Introduction
1
Defining and describing cohabitation
4
Believing themselves to be married?
8
The extent of cohabitation in past times
14
The scope and structure of the book
20
2       ‘Fornicators’: the punishment of illicit sex, 1600–1760s
24
Punishing sex outside marriage
26
The rarity of cohabitation
33
Restoration rakes and libertines
40
‘Cohabitation’ contracts in the secular courts
43
Conclusion
49
3       No Name: law, morality and precedent in the long nineteenth century, 1770s–1900
52
What name?
54
Big claims and small numbers
57
Passing as married?
76
Were cohabiting couples ever treated as if they were married?
85
Promises of provision: the law’s approach
89
Divorce and cohabitation
102
Conclusion
106
4       ‘Unmarried wives’ in war and peace, 1900–1927
109
High theory and limited practice
111
Responding to reality
115
Wartime emergencies
121
Peacetime emergencies
127
The disappearance of the ‘unmarried wife’ from the statute book
129
War babies and returning soldiers
131
Conclusion
133
5       ‘Living in sin’: concerns and changes, 1928–1963
135
Ideas, attitudes and practices
139
Changing behaviour
143
Facilitating (re)marriage
149
The preference for the married family
154
State recognition: entitlements and disqualifications
158
The appearance of ‘common-law wives’
162
Conclusion
164
6       ‘Stable illicit unions’: cohabitation and the reform of divorce, 1963–1972
165
How many cohabiting couples were barred from marrying?
166
Did cohabiting couples regularise their unions in the wake of divorce reforms?
174
Divorce as a reason for cohabitation
177
Conclusion
183
7       ‘Common-law wives’: the creation of the myth, 1973–1979
184
Charting the rise of cohabitation
186
Visibility and acceptability
188
Setting up home
193
From ‘living in sin’ to ‘common-law marriage’
196
Legal change and the creation of the common-law marriage myth
200
The impact of change
217
Conclusion
219
8       ‘Live-in lovers’: under the Tories, 1979–1997
221
The accelerating rise of cohabitation
224
The stalling of momentum
231
Continuing incentives to cohabit
241
Cohabitants as parents
244
The ‘Live-in Lovers’ Bill
250
Conclusion
253
9       ‘Partners’: New Labour and neutrality, 1997–2010
255
Continuing legal uncertainties, omissions and limitations
258
Cohabitation today: difficulties in interpreting the demographic evidence
262
Reform deferred
267
Fuelling the common-law marriage myth
272
Conclusion
275
10      Conclusion
277
Index
283

About the Author

Rebecca Probert
University of Warwick

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