ABA Family Legal Guide

Family Law

Marriage

Living Together Outside of Marriage

Can two people live together without being married?

Of course. The Census Bureau reports 3.8 million people cohabit. Two unrelated people can generally live together anywhere they want. A few states still have laws prohibiting "fornication"--sexual relations between a man and woman who are not married--but such laws are virtually never enforced.

Some states have also had laws against "sodomy," which, among other things, prohibited sexual relations between people of the same sex. Those laws have rarely been enforced if the conduct is private, consensual, and between adults. Moreover, in 2003, in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, the U. S. Supreme Court invalidated a Texas law that criminalized oral and anal sex by consenting gay couples. This effectively declared unconstitutional all state sodomy laws as they applied to private, consensual intimacy.