How Friends Can Be Protected and Benefitted in the Law

In the US, hundreds of laws benefit and protect only people who are legally married. Advocates of fairness for single people have proposed many ways in which laws and policies could be reimagined to put unmarried Americans on equal footing with married Americans. In an important new book, The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center, Rhaina Cohen describes how laws and policies could be rewritten to value friendship and not just marriage. Both perspectives result in very similar sets of suggestions.

The “other significant others” in Cohen’s book are often particularly close friends, such as platonic life partners. In an interview, Cohen defined a platonic life partner as

“a type of friendship where people engage in activities typically associated with romantic partners, such as building a life together and planning a future. This can include living together, owning a home, raising children, and growing old. Those involved in these friendships see themselves as a unit, thinking of themselves as a “we.””

Cohen points to a few of the many benefits that benefit married couples, but not platonic partners, are granted in federal laws. (I’m creating a bullet list out of her sentence.)

“getting access to each other’s employer-provided health care;
making a foreign-born spouse eligible for a green card;
passing any amount of money or property to each other tax-free;
collecting unemployment upon leaving a job to join their spouse who has been relocated;
filing a lawsuit for their spouse’s wrongful death; and
refusing to testify against their spouse in a criminal case.”

Fairness for Friends: Some Possibilities

Here are four possible routes to greater justice for friends.

Just Get Married

One straightforward way a pair of friends could avail themselves of every last benefit and protection accorded only to legally married people would be to get married. Some of the platonic partners Cohen interviewed have gotten married, but wished there were other options. One set of friends felt uncomfortable when other people kept assuming that their marital status implied a sexual relationship. Others did not want to take part in elevating marriage above all other kinds of relationships. And, as I discussed in Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life, many single people have “The Ones” rather than “The One.” A contract that includes just two people would not work for them.

The fundamental objection of advocates for fairness for single people is that no one should have to get married in order to have access to the basic benefits and protections accorded to married people as a matter of course. There have to be better ways.

Abolish Marriage

Another approach that is equally straightforward (in theory) is to abolish marriage as a legal category. Marriage would no longer be a ticket to special treatment under the law. People could still “marry” in a place of worship or in ceremonies of their choosing, but those relationships would not be protected, benefitted, or controlled by the state.

The abolition possibility has been widely discussed. Cohen relegates it to a footnote, because politically, it is just not “in the realm of the possible.”

Minimize Marriage

An alternative to abolishing marriage entirely as a legal category is to give marriage “the Marie Kondo treatment, retaining only what’s necessary.” Surely marriage does not need hundreds of benefits and protections. To implement this alternative, Cohen suggests that we study each law and consider whether its purpose can be achieved without using marriage as the criterion. For example, if a law had been designed to protect the caregiving that can happen in a marriage, a different law could be passed that covers caregiving in friendships, too.

Create a Legal Structure for Nonmarital Relationships

Cohen credits law professor Nancy Polikoff with a suggestion for a legal structure that would be an alternative to marriage: a registry in which individuals can designate someone to be their default person, as, for example, when important decisions need to be made.

Another example, implemented in Colorado, is a “designated beneficiary agreement.” The agreement lists 16 categories, mostly about finances and health; individuals can decide, for each of the categories, whether or not to grant that right to the other person. Unlike in a marriage contract, the rights do not have to be reciprocal. Even more flexible would be agreements that include more than two people.

Why This Matters, Beyond the Obvious

To advocates of friendship and single life, the importance of according the same benefits and protections to people other than partners in marriage probably seems obvious. Perhaps less self-evident are the bigger-picture ways in which the marginalization of friendships (and single people) in the law matters. Cohen notes:

“the invisibility of friendship in the law perpetuates the idea that friendships are less valuable than romantic relationships, which then justifies the absence of legal protection for friendship.”

In “Single and flourishing: Transcending the deficit narratives of single life,” I reviewed many of the ways in which single people’s lives are characterized as lesser lives, then described some of the implications:

“When deficit narratives of single life are perpetuated, single people, and the people who matter to them, are less likely to be treated fairly. Employers see less need to offer time off to single employees to care for the important people in their lives, because those people really aren’t all that important. Oncologists recommend less aggressive treatment to single patients because they think they don’t have anyone in their lives to help them or because they think single people lack the will to live (DelFattore,2019). The deficit narrative that maintains that single life is just temporary, a place where people mark time until they are coupled (Lahad, 2017), stands in the way of social change. Why join a movement advocating for justice for single people when single people will get all the benefits and privileges of coupling once they find that special someone?”