SPECIAL FEATURE
Legal reforms appropriate for cohabitants
and LATs
Cynthia Grant Bowman
Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Law, Cornell
Law School, Ithaca, New York, USA
Correspondence
Cynthia Grant Bowman, Dorothea S. Clarke
Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Ithaca,
NY USA.
Email: cgb28@cornell.edu
Abstract
Cohabitants and LATs (couples who “live apart together”)
do not fit the traditional categories and rules of our family
law system. This article describes what we know about both
cohabitants and LATs in the U.S., compares the two institu-
tions, and makes recommendations about legal reforms with
respect to each. For cohabitants the reforms would assimi-
late cohabiting couples to marriage after the passage of time,
based on the evidence of their economic interdependence
and the probability that there are children in their house-
holds. As to LATs, the reforms proposed are limited to those
that would support the caretaking functions LATs perform
for each other, resultingin benefits to society as a whole.
KEYWORDS
alimony, children, cohabitation, couples living apart, LATs, legal
reform, nonmarriage, palimony, unmarried couples
Key points for the family court community
•With only around half of Americans living in married
couples, cohabitation has now established itself as an
alternative family form.
•Cohabitants are economically interdependent, and many
are raising children in their households.
•About 10% of adult Americans, called LATs, live in
committed couples but do not share a residence.
•LATs prize their economic independence of one another
but provide major caretaking of their partners, especially
in illness.
DOI: 10.1111/fcre.12686
© 2022 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.
102 Family Court Rev. 2023;61:102–115.
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fcre
