Fearing that California courts would be flooded with palimony cases, then-Assemblyman Walter M. Ingalls (D-Riverside) introduced a bill in 1979 requiring written contracts, then altered it to provide rights only for couples who had lived together at least five years or for a partner who stayed home to rear children.
When the flood of palimony (coined from "alimony for pals" by a Newsweek writer who was interviewing Mitchelson) suits never materialized, the Legislature chose to avoid the whole subject and the bill died in committee.
Reasons why the flood never occurred include:
- Marriage is "in" and, when it fails, divorce is now socially acceptable, making living together less popular. The U.S. Census Bureau has reported that the increase in cohabiting couples slowed after 1980 and showed no increase from 1984 to 1985. The number had tripled during the 1970s, but has now leveled out at 2 million households.
"Marriage is kind of the ticket these days," Markey said, "and just living together and trying to adopt that life style that gives one (contract) rights and benefits really isn't all that significant between heterosexual couples."
- Educated by publicity about Marvin, couples are more likely to make oral (and occasionally written) agreements about property and simply divide it without resorting to court action when they break up. Alternately, they recognize they have no agreement and don't bother with futile suits.
Family law specialist Ira H. Lurvey said today's couples seem to be talking to each other more than ever before, even about sharing income and property.
"The first element of real love is candor," he said. "The ultimate romanticism is sharing the pragmatics in life."
"Marvin was very faddish," agreed family law specialist Arlene Colman-Schwimmer. "People have become much more alert to the problem and much more sophisticated in making their own agreements."
- Palimony suits are expensive to litigate and very hard to win.
Under civil rather than family law, they can take five years rather than 18 months to get to trial, and they provide no payment of attorney fees from community property. Few lawyers will handle the cases on a contingency basis, and the plaintiff--the less wealthy half of the couple--can rarely afford the attorney fees.
The Marvin and King cases made clear the difficulty of proving the existence of any written, oral or implied contract to share earnings. And the Bloomingdale and Liberace cases underscored the second peril--proving that an agreement was based on services other than sex.
"The problem was that lay people--and I had to go a few rounds with clients over this--thought if a woman lived with a man for a while she had an absolute right to collect," said family law specialist Maryanne La Guardia.
"As long as people thought there was going to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they were willing to pursue it. But now lawyers are being more careful. They have learned it is such a crap-shoot they are just not filing them."
Cohabiting Not Enough
"The public perception was that if you lived with somebody you could collect money," said Arthur J. Crowley, a family law specialist for 38 years who refuses to represent palimony plaintiffs because he doubts that lovers ever make property agreements. "That was not true. I really think Marvin is fairly passe."
Hillel Chodos, who successfully defended the Bloomingdales against Morgan's palimony claims but who has rejected all other palimony clients, insists that Marvin established little if any new contract law and could never satisfy cohabiting couples.
"People are usually after things the court can't give them," he said. "Like revenge, justification. They are angry because the person they picked turned out to be a turkey."
Dennis M. Wasser, who successfully defended Billie Jean King, said that emotions do play a big part in litigants' unwillingness to pursue lengthy, expensive palimony cases.
"The immediate anger after a breakup dissipates over a number of years," he observed. "In divorce you can get into court three or four weeks after filing for a temporary order and finish the whole thing in 6 to 12 months. Marvin takes five years. People don't stay quite mad enough to pay the attorney fees for all that time."
Divorce, Palimony
Originally, one of the major uses for Marvin was expected to be "tacking," or combining a palimony complaint with a divorce for couples who had lived together, married, and then divorced. The procedure was helpful in persuading judges to award larger support payments because of the total time the couple had been together.
Although Wasser defends clients from Marvin claims joined to divorce petitions in about 25% of his cases, he agreed with Judge Markey that even that use of Marvin is declining.
Marvin may be moribund, but nobody considers it dead.
