Article: What Should You Owe Your Ex? A Survey of Attitudes About the Law of Married and Cohabiting Relationships

What should you owe your spouse or partner and what should they owe you? We asked 3,000 married and cohabiting American adults what they think their rights and duties in their relationships ought to be, both during their relationships and upon breakup or divorce. We find that although married people broadly support the law of divorce and child support as applied to their relationships, cohabiting people are more skeptical. Cohabiting people like the idea of having certain rights against third parties while their relationships remain intact, but they are hesitant about duties. They also largely oppose rules that would split property and income upon breakup in a manner akin to the law of divorce and marriage. We find that both men and women tend to view the financial obligations of family dissolution as belonging disproportionately to men. Our results speak to the intensifying debate about the policy of cohabitation. As cohabitation becomes more common, a movement is growing to grant it a legal significance akin to marriage. We inform this debate by discovering what the people who live in these relationships want for themselves.