Social mores precede lawmakers

Wealth management as a couple, succession planning, filiation, retirement pensions, bankruptcy, the status of assets, etc. This publication brings together the contributions of 24 specialists to provide a legal overview of particular situations a couple may face. But the information in the book is just a snapshot of a field that is constantly changing. "Some topics change almost daily," says Paul Delnoy. “Every year, ‘catch-all’ laws make new changes. Take the law on provisional administration, which calls for people who are no longer able to manage their own assets because of a health condition to be provided with a temporary administrator. Well, a new law on the subject will take effect on January 1, 2014. Most of what we have written on the subject won't be valid anymore!" One example among many others. Which shows that social mores precede the laws. “Practices and usages change so quickly! The laws are always one step behind."

There was a time when laws on the subject didn't change very much. This was a time when marriage was the norm. But this stability didn't last for long after May 1968. "From then on, things changed quite a bit," explains the professor. 

Social, sexual, and cultural revolutions took a toll on marriage. In the book's introduction, the psychologist Christian Mormont, Honorary Professor at ULg, claims that greater access to birth control pills (legalized in France in 1967) "undoubtedly had the most profound effect on relationships. […] As soon as an effective contraceptive method became available, the inevitable link between sexual relations and reproduction was broken and sexuality based on eroticism took precedence over sexuality for reproduction. Everything changed when sexual desires cold be satisfied without catastrophic consequences. Moral restraints, which had seemed so well-established, rapidly gave way to erotic impulses. […] Since sexuality was no longer strictly limited to married couples, marriage was no longer seen as necessary, at least in the absence of children. Cohabitation, which had long been considered shameful, thus became the most common way to start life as a couple."

So much so that marriage now appears to be less popular that legal cohabitation. For the first time in Belgium, between January 1 and June 10, 2013, the number of new legal cohabitants (32,510 couples) was higher than that of married couples (24,372). This data must be taken in context, however, since legal cohabitation can include any two people who share the same home, not necessarily the same bed (brother and sister, parent-child, friends, etc.)! However, we must not forget de facto cohabitation, which is hard to quantify given that no administrative documents are signed.

Are married couples and cohabitants equal?

"I believe that de facto cohabitation became more popular because divorcing was so difficult," says Paul Delnoy. It was not so long ago that in order to divorce by mutual agreement, the future ex-husband and ex-wife had to appear before the president of the tribunal three times to answer the question "are you sure that you want to separate?" before being able to officially request a divorce. Thus in order to keep up with changing mores, an alternative status was created that formalised the relationship to a certain degree without necessitating a lengthy separation process: legal cohabitation.