Bodelning och bostad: ekonomisk självständighet eller gemenskap

Sammanfattning: This dissertation gives a description of the regulation of marriage, registered partnership and cohabitation - emphazising the joint dwelling - in the perspective of two basic normative patterns, on one side community and on the other financial independence/individual ownership, trying to explain the differences and similarities between the regulations. The content of the legal regulation is, furthermore, set in relation to the question whether marriage and cohabitation are best characterised as status or contractual relationships. The idea of marriage as a lifelong union for the common good stands in opposition to the view on marriage as a terminable contract. Marriage as a status relationship builds on the idea of community. The basic normative pattern of community stands, however, in conflict with the basic normative pattern of individual ownership and financial independence, which is also at work in the field of family law. The tension between these different normative poles surfaces constantly in the law of marriage, and now even in the law governing registered partnership. The concept of cohabitation - whether heterosexual or homosexual - does not, contrary to marriage, include an expectation that the relationship should be life-long. The idea of a community exists nevertheless also in a cohabitation relationship and conflicts with the pattern of financial indepence and indvidual ownership. As in the case for spouses, the levelling of community property for cohabitees serves several purposes: economic justice, protecion of the weaker party and the ambition to achieve economic equality between men and women.