OLD GITS - Numbers shacking up "jumped significantly" :)

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LATimes

August 23, 2001 They're Older but Not Old-Fashioned About Love and Marriage

The number of seniors who choose to live together has jumped significantly in the last decade.

By ROBIN FIELDS, Times Staff Writer

They may be the most low-profile participants in one of the 2000 census' most high-profile trends. A small but growing number of Americans over age 65 now live as cohabiting couples, almost twice as many as a decade ago, census surveys show.

For older people, living together holds both emotional and financial attractions, but requires shedding moral inhibitions ingrained in youth and, at times, dealing with the squeamishness of children and longtime friends.

Demographers expect the portion of senior couples who cohabit to grow dramatically in the 2010 and 2020 censuses as baby boomers who rebelled in their 20s bring their attitudes into old age. For the swing generation of 60-and-overs captured in this census, however, living together remains a liberating, if conflict-laced, option.

"We grew up in a different generation," said Ruth Nippe, 79, who has lived with partner Jim McDaniel, 81, in Mission Viejo for four years. "I came from a small town in Nebraska. I would have been ostracized for sure for living this way. I guess I used to care more what people said."

The 2000 census data released so far shows that unmarried-partner households overall increased 72% in the last decade. Age-specific data will come later, but a clutch of other census surveys suggests that seniors, though constituting only a drop in the pool of cohabitants, may have met or outpaced that growth rate.

According to the Census Bureau's annual Current Population Survey, households made up of opposite-sex senior couples rose 46% between 1996 and 2000, a bigger jump than that of their middle-aged counterparts. Other reports fold in same-sex couples, showing the number of senior cohabitants rising 73% between 1990 and 1999, from 127,000 to 220,000.

Though couples' reasons for living together can be as idiosyncratic as relationships themselves, researchers link the shift to other social changes.

Higher divorce rates and longer life expectancies, especially for women, mean the population of single seniors is growing rapidly, sociologists said. For younger couples, marriage is often linked to the prospect of parenthood; older couples typically are beyond this stage in life. Though eager for love and companionship, they may be skittish about formal ties.

Retired St. Louis college professors Carol Kohfeld, 61, and John Sprague, 67, met after enduring painful marital breakups and were determined not to go down that road again. "Once burned, twice shy," Sprague said. "I was married in 1955 and there were people who lived together then, but it wasn't something that really crossed your radar screen. Society had changed a great deal by the time I found myself divorced and single."

Researchers say older women, too, can be reluctant to re-up for marriage if they associate it with traditional gender roles played out in earlier relationships.

As potent as the emotional issues can be, pragmatism, not romance, often governs whether those older than 60 live together instead of getting hitched. Cohabitation, like marriage, allows older couples to share expenses, a crucial concern to those living on fixed incomes as life spans extend.

Not marrying, however, means couples do not take on the financial obligations of each other's long-term medical care or intermingle their retirement benefits. Such practicalities have kept Darlene Davis, 61, from marrying her partner of 17 years, Cary Cohen, 63. If the Norfolk, Va., pair wed, she would lose military benefits and insurance from her second marriage, which ended long ago with her husband's death. "We were not brought up to live in this position, but with our lives such as they are, we just can't afford to give up my medical coverage," Davis said.

While cohabiting seniors can—and often do—expressly provide for each other in their wills, unmarried partners do not have the same claims as spouses in many states. Many couples say they have left late-in-life relationships unofficial to avert conflict between the surviving partner and relatives.

"We didn't want to tie up our estates," Nippe of Mission Viejo said. "At our age, we have to think about when one of us isn't going to be here. Even though I'm very good friends with his kids, I wouldn't be comfortable if they ended up owning half of my house."

In California, where domestic partners have substantial rights, attorneys recommend that older couples with such concerns put property agreements in writing.

"It sets out a road map," said Stuart D. Zimring, an elder-law specialist in Los Angeles. Zimring recommends that unmarried seniors execute powers of attorney designating their partners to make health-care decisions if they are incapacitated. "There's nothing worse, if something happens, for there to be World War III," he said.

The 2000 census count may serve as merely a preview of sorts for what demographers expect to be faster growth in senior cohabitation 10 or 20 years from now.

About 40% of Americans currently in their 40s have cohabited at least once, said Larry Bumpass, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin and co-director of the National Survey of Families and Households, which tracks cohabitation. "I expect a very rapid transformation in the behavior of the elderly as those who grew up in the age of rapid acceptance of cohabitation reach old age," he said.

Ultimately, the most powerful force altering seniors' living arrangements may be the changing nature of aging.

"People are healthy enough to extend their middle-aged lifestyles into their old age," said Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University professor who studies older love. "Sex and romance are not just for the young."

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001

Answers

My mother is "engaged" and they do live together, but have no plans to marry. Not wanting what little mom has to go to his kids is one reason, but the biggest one is that they are both on social security and if they marry, they take a significant hit in the pocketbook. My step-grandmother has been living with her significant other for years for the very same reason.

A little side note, when Mom and her friend first started living together, Mom didn't want us kids to know (like none of us had ever just lived with someone). I laughed at her and told her to enjoy her life and we kids didn't care and we all like her friend anyway (he is a sweetheart). Personally, I don't care if she leaves me a thing if she enjoys her senior years.

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001


Yup, I think it's only reasonable and sensible, given Social Security payments. In some cases, it may be the only time a widow (and perhaps a widower!) have had control of their very own income and the psychological benefits must be enormous.

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001

This is a tough situation for many. I noticed this situation, too, in my recent travels, but as I told one of the elderly ladies, it's certainly not my place to express any moral opinions on what the seniors have chosen to do to stretch their limited income. She was whispering to me at the time about how so-and-so down the street were living together and how this other lady she knew was living with *two* men. Jealous, perhaps? (;

-- Anonymous, August 26, 2001

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