What has been disheartening in the fight for recognition of unmarriage?

I get totally depressed by the Bush proposal to use $300 million in welfare dollars to promote marriage. Nudging people down the aisle doesn't feed the kids, heat the apartment, pay the electric bill. It's such clear evidence of stealing from the poor, taking money intended to fight poverty, and ensuring that it won't be directed into the kind of programs that have already been shown to help families get out of poverty.

In West Virginia right now, poor people on public assistance get $100 more each month if they're married. It's considered a "marriage incentive," but in effect, it's a penalty for unmarried people. The children in unmarried families are being punished for no fault of their own -- $100 a month is a lot of money for a family in poverty.

There's a lot of solid research that says the reason why the poor don't marry is not because of a lack of appreciation for matrimony. The Bush administration says their marriage promotion proposals are about teaching skills so that people who choose marriage can have better marriages. But I haven't heard anyone in his administration condemn what West Virginia's doing, and as far as I know, there's nothing in the draft legislation that would prevent any other state from using its marriage promotion money the same way.

Which couples can claim "unmarital" status? Roommates? Friends? People who live down the hall from each other?

The census has an "unmarried partner" check box, which it added to its forms for the first time in 1990. People who check off that box are living with an unmarried partner in an intimate relationship. Our book is geared toward that demographic -- couples who are living together before marriage or instead of it. Our work with the Alternatives to Marriage Project has a broader focus, so it includes solo single people and people in all kinds of relationships who may or may not be living together.

But organizing around these issues is a linguistic challenge. The word "unmarried" is a real problem, because it defines who we are based on what we're not -- married. I think the word "single" is even worse, though -- it comes with this stereotype of someone sitting home alone, watching reruns and eating cold pizza. When you hear "single" you certainly don't think of committed couples, or unmarried people who live alone but have rich, fulfilling lives full of friendships and relationships.

And there are similar linguistic problems on the individual level. There's the challenge of how to introduce each other. At some point, most people outgrow "boyfriend" and "girlfriend." "Significant other" has so many syllables. "Partner" leads to all sorts of confusion: Are you business partners? In "Unmarried to Each Other," we have our collection of 40 different terms unmarried partners tell us they use, from "sweetie" to "spousal equivalent" to "copilot." One woman we interviewed told us that years earlier, she was on "The Today Show," and they asked her what she calls her partner. And she blurted out, "I just call him Frootloops." Afterward, all her friends asked her, "How could you call him that on national TV?"

Lynn Wardle, a law professor at Brigham Young University, is a vocal critic of the ALI recommendations, because, in his words, "many heterosexuals wish to avoid marriage and the obligations of marriage." Since you include among the unmarried people who aren't sure yet that they want to commit, aren't you unintentionally agreeing with conservatives like Wardle?

It's pretty ironic to see people who have built their careers opposing family diversity suddenly try to protect all those "heterosexuals who wish to avoid marriage." For most people, cohabitation is a life stage between dating and marriage, a step along the path. Other unmarried partners are choosing not to marry or can't marry. To me, this is about providing choices. People might choose legal marriage, or they might choose domestic partnership. Many will undoubtedly start out as domestic partners and then later get married. Regardless of whether they're wearing wedding rings, we have an ethical obligation to make sure people can be treated fairly in a court of law.

From what I understand about the American Law Institute's recommendations, anyone can "opt out" of the laws that ALI is proposing, by writing their own cohabitation agreement. That way, people who don't want certain legal assumptions made about their relationship can avoid the suggested legal obligations. But the ALI's recommendations would protect vulnerable people who currently find themselves out of luck in a legal system that turns its back on unmarried relationships. We get calls from people with really sad stories, horrible situations where they assumed the law would take care of them, and it doesn't.

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