Cohabit
A Dictionary of Law · William C. Anderson · 1889
A Dictionary of Law
1.
The primary meaning is to dwell with some one, not merely to visit or to see that one. In criminal statutes, to live together as husband and wife. As, in the act of Congress of March 22, 1882, c. 47, forbidding polygamy. To live together in the same house as married persons live together, or in the manner of husband and wife.
2.
In a popular sense, sometimes found in statutes and decisions, includes the idea of occupying the same bed, and sexual intercourse.
Cohabitation
As a fact presumptive of marriage, not a sojourn, nor a habit of visiting, nor even a remaining with for a time. Neither cohabitation nor reputation of marriage, nor both, is marriage. Conjoined, they are evidence from which a presumption of marriage arises. The legal idea of cohabitation is that which carries with it a natural belief that it results from marriage only. To cohabit is to live or dwell together, to have the same habitation; so that where one lives and dwells there the other always lives and dwells. The Scotch expression, "the habit and repute" of marriage, conveys the true idea better, perhaps, than our own. When we see a man and a woman constantly dwelling together, we obtain the first idea in the presumption of marriage; and when we add to this that the parties thus constantly living together are reputed to be man and wife, and so taken and received by all who know them both, we take the second step in the presumption of the fact of a marriage. Marriage is the cause, these follow as the effect. An inconstant habitation and a divided reputation of marriage carry with them no full belief of an antecedent marriage as the cause. Irregularity in these elements of evidence is at once a reason to think that there is irregularity in the life itself which the parties lead: unless attended by independent facts, which aid in the proof of marriage. Without concomitant facts to prove marriage, such an irregular cohabitation and partial reputation of marriage avail nothing in the proof of marriage.
See Condonation; Desertion, 1; Lascivious; Marriage; Reputed.