Legislative Study Of Heterosexual Cohabitation

The relatively stable relationship between two single men and women with strict full civil capacity who are not married but live together is called heterosexual cohabitation. In real life, there is much heterosexual cohabitation in adult age, including young people, middle-aged and elderly. Heterosexual cohabitation has the following characteristics:first, the cohabitation partners should be two single men and women with strict full civil capacity for civil conduct; second, they are voluntary to live together like husband and wife without marriage; again, the life should be relatively stable; finally, the establishment of cohabitation relationship doesn’t require both of them make their relationship clear to public no matter whether they live in the name of husband and wife. As the basis of its legitimacy to be adjusted by law, heterosexual cohabitation’s essence of living together makes themselves morally neutral. In addition, heterosexual cohabitation is different from de facto marriage and illegal cohabitation in many aspects like conditions in terms of subject, subjective intention, and objective performance and so on.At present, with the shift in ideas, promotion of economic, science and technology and the social increasing acceptance, more and more people choose to live together without marriage. The phenomenon has produced some problems of personal relation and property relation between the partners of cohabitants. However, there has not yet the systemic norm, just some piecemeal legislation about cohabitation which proved to be too simple. In contrast, some foreign countries have formed a relatively adequate legal system of heterosexual cohabiting at the early20th century. Making heterosexual cohabitation become a new form of home like marriage has gradually become a worldwide trend. From legislation models to specific contents of the system, there are many lessons that we can learn, In abroad, legislation model mainly has four kinds of cohabitation law, including the registration model equivalent to marriage and different from marriage, and the fact model equivalent to marriage and different from marriage. By comparison, the specific rules of law in the fact model different from marriage are most worthy of our study. On the basis of comparative analysis, and combined with China’s specific national conditions, value and background of our legislative system, some suggestions on how to build our country’s legal system of heterosexual cohabitation are put forward, mainly consists of three parts. First, the principle of heterosexual cohabitation legislation should be followed, including respect of the partners’ autonomy of will, differential treatment from marriage and protection of the best interests of their children. Secondly, we should give priority to the fact legislative model with differential treatment from marriage, supplemented record mode when building our country’s legal system of heterosexual cohabitation. The last part of the thesis is to give some suggestions on the construction of our country’s heterosexual cohabitant legislation, such as the conditions and terminations on the legal relationship between the heterosexual partners and the specific rights and obligations about their personal relation, property relation and the parent-child relationship. Faced with our country’s cohabitation practice and legislative value, drawing on the experience of extraterritorial legislation, paper tries to adjust the heterosexual cohabitation by law to give it weaker legal effect than marriage and finally make it become a new model of family like marriage. Thus the law system that not only keep the dominance of marriage but also respect the cohabitation practice and people’s pursuits for diverse lifestyle can be constructed, and ultimately to promote the improvement of the legislative system of marriage and family and may be a little good in the formation of our country’s civil law system.