With the divorce rate at fifty percent, more or less, many individuals who recouple decide that being “nonmarried” feels more secure and even more committed than remarrying. Still, more and more couples are coming into Janet Miller Wiseman Mediation and Counseling Services to design Mediated Cohabitation Agreements.
In these agreements, couples design their financial arrangements. The circumstances of one pair was that he moved into her condominium from a rent-controlled apartment where the rent had been kept very low. The couple decided to keep their finances separate, with a joint account for living expenses, into he would enter a disproportionately lower amount for rent. Because there were no children involved, they made each other the beneficiaries of their retirement accounts, along with their siblings as primary beneficiaries.
The couple designed a section on household chores, household furnishings, and physical exclusivity. It was a custom-designed Agreement that looked like no other Mediated Cohabitation Agreement.
Another couple in which the gentleman has been officially divorced for only a year, would like to buy a house together, but both are feeling ambivalent about the short length of time he has been divorced. They are feeling that somehow they should be married, to express their commitment before buying a house. They’ve decided that rather than marriage, the measure of their commitment will be written into their co-habitation agreement, along with their other financial, household chore commitments, and decision to be physically exclusive.