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The Changing Legal Regulation of Cohabitation

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

Author: Rebecca Probert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107020849
Published In: September 2012
Format: Hardback , 320 pages
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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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

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