Housemates want 'divorce' benefits, too

By Donia Mills

Plain Dealer special

From California, the wonderful state that gave us no-fault divorce, now comes another new wrinkle in

family law: divorce without marriage.

The most celebrated and farreaching domestic case of the last few years involves Hollywood actor Lee Marvin, who has successfully grappled with gangsters, gorillas, Gmen, Western sheriffs, Nazis and the Japanese navy in the course of his 26-year movie career.

But a year ago, Marvin did not fare so well at the hands of the California Supreme Court.

In a landmark decision in December of 1976, the court ruled that Michelle Triola, Marvin's unmarried nousemate from 1964 to 1970, has a legal right to claim half of what they had accumulated during their years together if theirs was a household relationship. If a lower court rules in her favor on that point, Miss Triola will be entitled to a settlement under California's community property statute.

Miss Triola, who had legally changed her last name to Marvin during that time, was asked only to prove in court that their relationship was based upon an oral or implied agreement to split their worldly assets 50-50 should they part.

Her case, to be decided by a lower court in May following the state Supreme Court's ruling, is being closely watched by attorneys and court officials.

While some condemn the development as an affront to the institution of marriage, a boon for female gold-diggers and a veritable Pando-

ra's box of legal questions, others embrace it as a long-overdue move toward legal equality for “martyred” single women who have traditionally given their all in a romantic relationship and gotten zero for their troubles when the party's over.

Critics of the ruling point to the subsequent questions that will inevitably come up:

• Can one partner be sued for the other's debts?

• Will support payments be terminated upon marriage or another non-marriage? Are they subject to bankruptcy or deductible under the Internal Revenue Code?

• Does the Marvin decision apply to homosexual couples or non-sexual partners too?

Can a survivor collect Social Security benefits of the deceased?

"It becomes rather ironic," says Henry Foster Jr., a law professor emeritus at New York University and immediate past chairman of the American Bar Association's family law committee, "that people find themselves entangled in these disputes when they probably, entered this kind of relationship (cohabita tion) in the first place because they wanted to avoid legal red tape."

Doris Jonas Freed, a matrimonial law expert who is chairing the research committee of the ABA's family law section, points out that it is vastly unjust to start honoring the non-monetary contributions of nonmarried women when all but 16 states refuse to recognize the contributions of legally married housewives in property settlements.

"In many cases, these wives have worked long and hard in the course of their marriages, but the legal

recognition of their homemaking. contributions has been very slow coming," she said.

On the other hand, claims Miss Triola's Los Angeles attorney, Marvin Mitchelson, the Marvin vs. Marvin. decision is one of the most revolutionary of recent years because, "for the first time in this country, a court has come out and recognized a real life-style."

The number of non-married couples in the United States, officially set at 1.3 million in 1976 by the Census Bureau, doubled since the census of 1970 and has increased 800% over the past 15 years.

And yet for many of these couples, who regard their non-marital union as an acceptable alternative to marriage, "pre-Marvin" law (as Californians tend to say) has lagged far behind the social reality.

If breaking up the household has cast them into a legal no-man's-land, staying together has also brought discrimination in such areas as credit, insurance, housing, family health plans, child custody and survivor's benefits. regardless of the stability of their relationship.

In California, traditionally the vanguard in such life-style law matters, cohabiting couples are reportedly reacting to the Marvin decision like flies gathering around honeypot.

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If Marvin vs. Marvin is an important test case in the arena of family law, few states have yet to actually test the new principle handed down.

Six months ago, the Minnesota Supreme Court agreed to apply the

Marvin decision in a property set-

tlement involving a couple who had lived t 21 years, ordering

them to split everything 50-50.

An Oregon court recently handed down a similar decision.

But the Georgia Supreme Court last year specifically disagreed with Marvin, and observers in other states with conservative family law statutes see little likelihood that the California case will make much practical difference in their states.

"Let me tell you what's happening in New York nothing!" exclaims Myrna Felder, a matrimonial lawyer and former president of the New York Women's Bar Association.

"In domestic law, New York is one of the most backward states in the union," Miss Felder said. "Wel have no community property, as: California does. If it's in the husband's name, he gets it all. The only chance a woman here has at a fair share of her husband's wealth is if she can con him into moving to New Jersey or Connecticut, where the rule is 'equitable distribution' at the discretion of the court.

And if the wife can't get it, Miss Felder says, they're certainly not going to give it to a mistress.

Cohabitation is illegal in 20 states, and fornication is a crime in 16, punishable by a three-year jail term in Massachusetts and Arizona. Adultery, as well, is against the law in a majority of states.

While rarely enforced, many lawyers claim the mere existence of such statutes will be enough to inhibit the application of Marvin in the jurisdictions affected.