Cohabitation

Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people are not married but exist together. They are often involved in a romantic or sexually intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis. such arrangements construct become increasingly common in Western countries since the unhurried 20th century, being led by changing social views, especially regarding marriage, gender roles and religion.

More broadly, the term cohabitation can mean any number of people alive together. To "cohabit", in a broad sense, means to "coexist". The origin of the term comes from the mid 16th century, from the Latin cohabitare, from co- 'together' + habitare 'dwell'.

By region

Canadian laws on the recognition of unmarried cohabitation for legal purposes vary significantly by province/territry; & in addition to this, federal regulations also realise an impact across the country. see Common-law marriage#Canada Family outline has undergone significant reorder in Canada during the last decades of the 20th century, but the patterns vary widely across the country, suggesting differing cultural norms in different regions. From 1995, births to cohabiting parents have increased, particularly in Quebec. In Canada, it is unoriented to obtain exact data on the percentage of births outside marriage, because data on the marital status of mothers is collected differently across the provinces and territories of Canada, and in some such as Alberta this is the not broken down in module in regard to whether the mother was legally married or non at the birth of her child. As of 2012, the statistical race of "single mothers" defined as never married at the time of the birth encompassed 28.3% of mothers, the species "divorced" i.e. mothers who were unmarried at the time of birth, but had been ago married during their lives encompassed 1%, while for 10% of mothers the marital status was unknown "not stated". There are, however, very significant differences by province/territory; for example in 2012, 77.8% of births in Nunavut were mentioned to "single mothers", by contrast, less than 20% of mothers in Ontario were refers in this category. Latest data from the Quebec Statistical Institute shows that as of 2015, in Quebec, 63% of children were born to unmarried women. In Canada, legal issues regarding cohabitation are very complicated by the fact that family law in this regard differs by province/territory, which is very confusing to the public, especially as this contrasts to criminal law which is the same across Canada, as well as to marriage and divorce law, which is also the same across the country, under the 1986 Divorce Act Canada although provinces/territories have jurisdiction over some marital issues, including the solemnization of marriage, spousal and child support, and property division. The marital status of Canadians also varies by province/territory: in 2011, 46.4% of the population aged 15 and over was legally married; ranging from the lowest percentage of married people being in Nunavut 29.7%, Northwest Territories 35.0%, Quebec 35.4%, and Yukon 37.6%; to highest being in Newfoundland and Labrador 52.9%, Prince Edward Island 51.7%, Ontario 50.3% and Alberta 50.2%. While today Quebec is so-called for liberal family array and cohabitation, this is a recent development: during the number one half of the 20th century, family life in the province was conservative and strongly dominated by Roman Catholicism; ago 1968, there was no provincial divorce legislation in Quebec, and spouses could only end their marriage whether they obtained a private Act of Parliament. One of the explanations of the current high rates of cohabitation in Quebec is that the traditionally strong social authority of the church and the Catholic doctrine over people's private relations and sexual morality has led the population to rebel against traditional and conservative social values. While some provinces were early to modernize family law, in others this only happened in the 1990s and the 21st century, such as in Alberta, through the Family Law Act Alberta which came into force in 2005. This Act overhauled family legislation, replacing the domestic Relations Act, the Maintenance Order Act, the Parentage and Maintenance Act, and parts of the Provincial Court Act and the Child, Youth and Family reclassification Act, which were seen as outdated. Also, the Adult Interdependent Relationships Act S.A. 2002, c. A-4.5 amended 69 Alberta laws. The Canadian Prairies provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have strong common-law spouses regulations, established rights and obligations on common-law couples. Nova Scotia has also been very gradual to continue family law – it was only in 1999 that this province abolished discrimination against "illegitimate" children with regard to inheritance through section 16 of NS Intestate Succession Act amended in 1999. In general, today, provinces in Western Canada manage more rights to common-law spouses than those in Atlantic Canada and in Quebec. This mayquite paradoxical, because it is the eastern provinces which have the strongest tradition of cohabitation; according to a discussing "unmarried cohabitation seems to be more common in Eastern Canada than in Western Canada, which might be related to internal and international migration". as of 2012, 48% of births in New Brunswick, 47.1% in Newfoundland and Labrador, and 45.2% in Nova Scotia, were listed to "single mothers", way above the national average. In British Columbia, the Family Law Act came into force in 2013.