Nonmarital Relationships and Cohabitation: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Family Law Topic 2, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
The older label for a stable nonmarital cohabiting relationship; some states use it neutrally to trigger equitable division of jointly acquired property at breakup.
Marvin v. Marvin
The 1976 California decision allowing unmarried partners to enforce express contracts and equitable claims, so long as sexual services are not the consideration.
Express cohabitation contract
A written or oral agreement between unmarried partners governing property, support, and services, enforceable in most states if not founded on illicit consideration.
Implied cohabitation agreement
A bargain inferred from the parties' conduct, joint accounts, and pooled labor, recognized in some states and rejected in others as too speculative for nonmarital partners.
Hewitt v. Hewitt
The Illinois decision refusing to enforce implied claims between cohabitants on the ground that doing so would resurrect abolished common law marriage.
Illicit consideration doctrine
The rule that a cohabitation agreement is unenforceable to the extent sexual services form the consideration, though severable property promises may survive.
Quantum meruit between partners
A restitution claim for the reasonable value of services rendered during cohabitation, often defeated by the presumption that domestic services are gratuitous.
Presumption of gratuitous services
The assumption that housework, childcare, and companionship supplied within an intimate household are gifts, requiring clear proof of an expectation of payment.
Constructive trust for cohabitants
An equitable remedy imposing a trust on title held by one partner where retaining the whole would unjustly enrich that partner at the other's expense.
Resulting trust
An equitable device returning beneficial ownership to the partner who supplied the purchase money where title was placed in the other's name without donative intent.
Domestic partnership
A registered status created by state or municipal law conferring a defined package of benefits such as health coverage, hospital visitation, and inheritance rights.
Civil union
A statutory status extending the state law rights and duties of marriage without the marital label, largely superseded after nationwide marriage recognition.
Reciprocal beneficiaries
A limited registration open to adults barred from marrying each other, such as relatives, conferring hospital, inheritance, and decision-making rights.
De facto parent in a cohabiting household
A nonbiological partner who lived with the child, provided care with the legal parent's consent, and formed a bonded parental relationship supporting standing.
Cohabitation as a support terminator
A statutory or contractual trigger ending alimony when the recipient cohabits in a marriage-like relationship, often requiring proof of economic interdependence.
Palimony
The popular label for support payments awarded to a former unmarried partner, resting on contract or restitution rather than any statutory alimony right.
Joint tenancy between partners
A concurrent estate with survivorship that unmarried couples often use as a deliberate substitute for marital property rights in a shared residence.
Tenancy by the entirety
A marital-only concurrent estate in many states featuring survivorship and creditor protection, unavailable to unmarried cohabitants.
Doctrine of necessaries
A common law rule making a spouse liable to third parties for the other's essential medical care and support, extended to both spouses or abolished in modern states.
Common law marriage abolition
The legislative trend ending informal marriage prospectively while grandfathering unions validly formed before the repeal date.
Braschi v. Stahl Associates
A New York decision reading family in a rent control statute functionally, protecting a surviving same-sex partner from eviction based on the couple's lived interdependence.
Statute of frauds in partner agreements
A defense arguing a cohabitation promise concerning land or performance beyond one year must be written, frequently raised against oral partner bargains.
Unjust enrichment claim
A restitutionary theory requiring a benefit conferred, appreciation of the benefit, and inequity in retaining it without payment, common in cohabitant property fights.
Nonmarital child support duty
The rule that support obligations follow legal parentage rather than marital status, so unmarried parents owe identical duties to their children.
Zoning family definition challenges
Litigation over ordinances restricting occupancy to related persons, weighing municipal interests against the associational claims of unrelated households.