Comparative Research On The Legal Relations Of The Non-Marital Cohabitation Between China And Japan

With the integration of the global economy and the culture fusion between the Western and Eastern countries, more and more young people are now pursuing a new lifestyle of establishing love relationships and families, the non-marital cohabitation.This kind of lifestyle provides cohabitants with sufficient freedom. However, it arises many conflicts and disputes as well. Due to the lack of formal requirements of marriage, non-marital cohabitation is not recognized as legal and it does not have the force of law, either. Once the relationship is broken, the cohabitants’financial requests for material or moral damages are very likely to be rejected by the judge. Besides, many children are given to birth during the non-marital cohabitation period, who are currently facing a lot of legal issues, such as parentage confirmation, guardianship duty and inheritance share.The issues of property division, children support affairs and other legal disputes, which are generated from the non-marital cohabitation relation without marriage certificate, cannot be solved efficiently and properly under the legal system. In order to resolve the dispute between a pair of non-marital cohabitants, the most critical factor is to define the legal nature of this non-marital cohabitation relation as well as its property relation and paternity relation.Research methods as systematical analysis, comparative analysis and empirical analysis will be used in this paper. Based on the elaboration of the concept and the legal characteristics of non-marital cohabitation, focusing on the partner, property and paternity relation as the research object, systematically comparing the relevant legislative and judicial provisions on non-marital cohabitation between China and Japan, drawing legislative model from several Western countries so as to reveal the defects and deficiencies in Chinese currently existed non-marital cohabitation legislation. On the basis of the comparison result, discussing the social foundation of constructing the legal system of non-marital cohabitation and providing several recommendations to improve regulation of non-marital cohabitation.