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"Let's Shack Up...." These words should be offensive to any couple in a relationship. The new buzz word is cohabitation. When couples live together in an emotionally and/or physically intimate relationship without a marriage license, they are cohabitating-shacking up. Many such couples often contend that marriage is just about a piece of paper. That's just not true.
Some couples want to live together before marriage for a number of reasons. These may include sexual relations, children out of wedlock, testing compatibility, financial security, avoiding higher income taxes, and divorce.
Wikipedia reports, in 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau reported 4.85 million cohabiting couples, up more than 1,000 percent from 1960, when there were 439,000 such couples. Prior to the 1960's, men & women living together without being married were socially shunned by families and persecuted by the law.
Fifty years ago, it was illegal in every state for a man and woman to live together without being married. Although, anti-cohabitation laws are not enforced today, just five states (Mississippi, Virginia, Florida, North Dakota and Michigan) still criminalize cohabitation by the opposite sexes as reported by Wikipedia.
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