Reinventing marriage by stealth?

I find this interesting: the idea that people should draw up cohabitation contracts. Why should this be done? Surely the point of living together is to avoid all that legal red-tape and all that straight married with two kids stuff? After all what's a bit of paper?
A spokeswoman for the Living Together campaign said the agreements were not just for relationships that failed but also helped couples "promote a peace of mind and security at having their finances organised". The agreements can also take in daily financial matters such as food bills.

I applaud this: it is recognising that the good health of relationships needs good support which is wired into wider society. IT may not be quite marraige as we had got used to it but its pretty close to marriage as it's come to be. Now all we have to do is begin to make the case plausibly that to enter such a relationship with an implicit get out clause is ultiumately liekly to proove corrosive and we have something pretty close to a Christian understanding of marriage, I think. It evolved partly because it works, over time. It may not be perfect and there are going to be hard cases but hard cases make bad law.

When it was reported on BBC breakfast this morning one couple were asked why not just get married, and it was interesting that their answer was pretty weak; a kind of gentle splutter that people live together nowadays and it was sensible to do this kind of thing. In other words marriage has informalised.

I reckon all we've really got to beat now is this meme about the necessity of multi-millial pound wedding and we can talk about the real stuff of relationships, commitment, love, security, God and blessing ...
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Agreements to aid de facto 'divorce'