Jan 13, 2005 - 07:40:08 CST
Legislators are trying again to jettison a state law that makes it illegal for unmarried couples to live together -- this time by offering an alternative.The proposal would target couples who claim they're married in an attempt to commit fraud.
It encountered little opposition Wednesday in the House Judiciary Committee, which is considering the issue for the second time in as many years. Representatives supported dumping the anti-cohabitation law in 2003, but the Senate voted to keep it.
North Dakota law makes it a crime, with a maximum punishment of 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, for a person to live "openly and notoriously with a person of the opposite sex as a married couple, without being married to the other person."
Offenders are almost never prosecuted, lawyers say. The North Dakota Supreme Court has considered one appeal of a cohabitation conviction, a 1938 case in which a man and woman were living together adjacent to a secondhand store.
"Here in North Dakota, we have college students sharing apartments," said Rep. Mary Ekstrom, D-Fargo. "We have seniors sharing living arrangements in order to hang onto their maximum Social Security benefits. And I, for one, at least, am not ready to call these individuals criminals."
Ekstrom's bill would repeal the anti-cohabitation law, which is tucked among a list of sex crimes in North Dakota's criminal code.
Her legislation would establish, in a separate section of the law, a crime of "deceptive marriage practices." A man-woman couple would violate the new law if they lived together, and passed themselves off as married "in order to obtain the property or services of another by deception," the bill says.
For example, Ekstrom said the law would apply if a man claimed a woman was his wife while checking her into the hospital for medical treatment, and then later disavowed responsibility for the bill.
Her proposal would not affect a state law that allows landlords to decline to rent to unmarried couples who want to live together, Ekstrom said.
"The compelling state interest is to protect hospitals and landlords and other people from somebody trying to pull a fast one on them. Lying, or trying to defraud them out of property," Ekstrom said.
Rep. Jim Kasper, R-Fargo, said he opposed the measure. However, he said his opposition would be mollified if the law applies to attempted theft of government services. No one else opposed the measure at Wednesday's hearing, and the committee took no immediate action.
Rep. Kathy Hawken, R-Fargo, said many cohabiting couples were doing so not for romance, but for safety and financial convenience. She, Ekstrom and Rep. Lois Delmore, D-Grand Forks, are the bill's House sponsors.
Seniors sometimes live together for companionship and to avoid having their Social Security benefits reduced by getting married, Hawken said.
"There are a number of seniors who have chosen to live together," she said. "It is particularly distressing to them that it is illegal."
The bill is HB1184.
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