Does Cohabitation Before Marriage Increase the Chances of Divorce?

 Posted on December 00,0000 in Chicago divorce attorney

More couples are choosing to live together before getting married, but that does not necessarily mean that they face a higher chance of divorce. New research out of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro found that there’s no correlation between cohabitation and divorce except when two individuals cohabitate at a young age.

This is not surprising, because settling down at a young age has already been linked to divorce in past studies. The research considered data from thousands of women from 1995, 2002, and between 2006 and 2010, and the results were published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. Lead researcher April Kuperberg says that this is an indication that all past research connecting cohabitation and divorce was the result of incorrect measurements.

Moving in with your significant other can be a difficult adjustment period, but it can also help clue you in to whether or not the relationship should move forward. Different habits in the household can cause couples to erupt into fights. Combining finances for the ease of paying bills can also clue significant others into the spending habits of their partners. Money, in fact, can be a significant factor that influences disagreements between partners.

The study did not dig into the topic of whether living together could improve marriage, but Kuperberg does says the results definitely prove that living together does not make a marriage worse. The only caveat to this claim is that those who move in together before the age of 23, because those couples do face a higher risk of splitting up at some point down the road.

Sometimes marriage problems can come to life years after you have moved in together from simply growing apart or other individual changes. If you have been thinking about legal separation or divorce, you need legal advice. Contact an Illinois divorce attorney today to discuss your options.