Rights of cohabiting and married couples

Majority want same rights for cohabitants as married couples

Published:

The results from a recent survey show that most young Norwegians would like to extend the rights of married couples to cohabiting couples. Although not everyone is aware of the legal differences between marriage and cohabitation, those who wish to favour marriage with respect to such rights and regulations score highest on knowledge of the current differences between marriage and cohabitation.

On the question "How should the state treat marriage and cohabitation if the union has lasted for at least two years or the couple has children together?" 70 per cent answered that laws and regulations should treat cohabitants and married couples the same way. About 30 per cent want the authorities to favour married couples to cohabiting couples, and hardly anyone wants laws and regulations to favour cohabitation.

But do they know the difference?

With the aim of measuring the participants' knowledge of the current laws, three questions were asked. The first question was whether cohabiting couples have the same rights as married couples if they have drawn up a cohabitation agreement. The next question was whether a cohabiting man automatically gets joint custody of his children. Finally, the respondents were asked whether a cohabiting couple who has lived together for at least two years enjoys the same security as a married couple should their cohabiting union dissolve. According to current regulations, no is the correct answer to all three questions.

38 per cent answered correctly on all three questions. 37 per cent answered two questions correctly and 18 per cent answered one questions correctly. 7 per cent had no correct answers.

Those who favour marriage to cohabitation also know most about the current legislation.

The survey "Fremtidsplaner familie og samliv 2003" was financed by the Research Council of Norway and undertaken by Statistics Norway. The sample was representative of the population and covered women aged 20 to 44 and men aged 23 to 47.

The non-response proportion was 37 per cent, which is approximately as expected for a postal survey. There are responses collected from 6 317 persons.

These results are the first to be published. More analyses will be published in 2004.

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