UNMARRIED BLISS; Bliss

American Demographics, Dec, 2000 by Rebecca Gardyn

A growing number of Americans today choose not to marry, yet they are far from "single." It's time that marketers acknowledge unmarried couples as consumers.

At the age of 11, while other girls dreamed of wedding dresses and engagement rings, Ruth Radetsky already knew she'd never let herself be bound by matrimony. "When I was first asked, `Will you ever marry?' my immediate and instinctive reaction was `No!'" says the now 42-year-old teacher from San Francisco. "I didn't want to be any man's property."

Even now, after spending almost half her life with partner Edward Hasbrouck, 40 - with whom she celebrates 19 years of unmarried bliss this month - she remains true to her childhood instincts. "Our relationship has lasted longer than those of any of our friends near our own age - married or not," Radetsky says. "We are actually looked up to as a model [couple]. I don't want to mess with what works."

But unmarried life is not so easily lived. As an unmarried couple in a husband-and-wife world, Radetsky and Hasbrouck have faced everything from alienation to discrimination from businesses that fail to provide for or acknowledge their special - but by no means unique - situation. When renting a car during a trip to Hawaii, for example, the couple was forced to pay an additional $5 per day in extra driver fees because they weren't married. Similarly, when they shopped for a home, they had difficulty finding a professional who understood the laws related to unmarried dual-ownership. "Lawyers advertise `alternative-family services' in gay publications but not in straight ones," says Radetsky. "But all committed, unmarried couples have larger than usual needs for financial and legal services. Where are the ads tailored to our needs?"

Today, there are nearly 8.5 million Americans living with an opposite-sex partner, up from 878,000 in 1960. While for many, cohabitation is a temporary step toward marriage, there is a growing subsegment - currently estimated at between 1 million and 2 million people - who are living with significant others in very committed, long-term relationships. These numbers are expected to explode in the coming decades for a variety of reasons, from the changing demographics of cohabitors to society's waning reverence for marital bliss and waxing valuation of individual independence. Because there is no default marriage contract for unmarried unions, these consumers have a greater demand for tailored financial, legal, tax, insurance, health care, and estate planning, and for some, even prenatal and day-care services. Yet for the most part, businesses have failed to notice their special needs, whether because of moral disagreement, ignorance, or the inability to find data or media outlets that define and reach this consumer group.

Companies that continue to ignore these trends, however, are missing out on a potentially lucrative marketing opportunity. The demographics of cohabitors are changing, and so too are their needs as consumers. "It used to be that unmarrieds were on the fringe - they were hippies, poor, or gay - and they didn't accumulate a lot of property," says Frederick Hertz, a real estate attorney from Oakland, California, and co-author of The Living Together Kit: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples, due out this month from Nolo Press. "Now my clients are anything from 70-year-olds who choose not to remarry because they don't want to lose Medicare benefits, to young, highly successful professionals who want to keep their independence and yet own a business and two homes with their partner. There has been an economic maturation of unmarried couples."

Not only are these couples accumulating more assets, they're getting older and wiser as well. "We always think of cohabitors as 20-year-olds, but there has been a real demographic shift," says Elizabeth Lewin, a certified financial planner and author of Financial Fitness for Living Together. "Twenty years ago, grandma might have looked down on the practice, but now she is doing it herself." While the biggest chunk of cohabitors today are in the 25- to 34-year-old range (38.2 percent), a substantial number (23 percent) are over the age of 45, and 4.4 percent are over the age of 65, up from practically zero in 1960.

Since about two-thirds of divorced people choose cohabitation over remarriage after a break-up, part of this trend can be linked to the growing divorce rate - up from 9 divorces per 1,000 married women in 1960 to almost 20 today. And as the 78 million Baby Boomers age, the number of older unmarried couples is poised to boom as well: 58 percent of all current divorced people are Boomers (aged 36 to 54).

In her book, Lewin notes that Boomer women are particularly likely to seek out these types of alternative living arrangements in their middle and later years because of this segment's tendency to have more divorces, longer lives, less children, and less predictable retirement incomes than other groups. Financial incentives to pass on remarriage as one gets older - including the ability to protect the inheritance of children from former marriages and the loss of certain social security payments - are also likely to persuade more older folks to engage in unmarried partnerships.