cohabitation for fun and convenience. What do you think?

I can understand why people would choose to cohabitate with all the bad press marriage gets these days. If you come from a family which has seen a lot of divorce, you might want to just not be part of the whole marriage thing at all. There are others who refuse to marry until everyone has equal rights to marriage, and I think that's very neat. The only real problem I can see with cohabitation is that you simply don't get the legal protections married people do. For example, if you live with your lover, and they become very ill, you might not be allowed to go see them in the hospital. If it is restricted to "family only", the hospital does not HAVE to let you in. Moreover, you won't have any say in medical decisions made for them if they are incapacitated, unless you have actually done power of attorney paperwork beforehand. There are just so many other issues that I can't mention them all: taxes, insurance, wills, etc. There are hundreds of legal protections married couples automatically get, and those who don't get married simply don't have them. Some of them can be duplicated through different legal procedures that take a lot of time and money, but even then not all of them can be.

I have opted for it. It's not a trial marraige or a doomed relationship. We just decided why fix it if it ain't broken? Our relationship does not need a piece of paper to show the world we love each other. We do that on our own. As for legalities, there are things called wills and Powers of Attorney forms at all lawyers offices. We both filled out one of each naming each other PoA so if God forbid anything happens, we are in control of our lives.