 Community Matter is here in a given Thursday. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is ThinkTech and the magic word of the day is Brad Coates That's two words, but yeah Close enough Brad's an attorney here in Pioneer Plaza But Brad has been involved in metronomial law since I think it was 1450 or so some like that Pleistocene age and his firm is really big on the scene of metronomial law But Brad is also a philosopher and and Brad is a what I'm gonna call a social social commentator. Is it fair? Well, I turned I turned into that to some degree. I wrote this divorce with decency book thinking it was gonna be a divorce handbook And then it turns out that really was changing so fast as society More than even divorce laws are changing. This is that that's the book Can we look at that book? Can we get it covered? Yeah, that's a really interesting book and these discussions that we have are really interesting so today we're going to talk about cohabitation as an alternative to marriage and You know, I guess one of the reasons we should talk about that is it's gaining momentum over over our lifetimes and probably even quicker now They have numbers on it. Do we know how many people are cohabiting instead of getting married? I don't know if I've got the exact numbers of that, but I can tell you that cohabitation has just taken off like crazy you know it's it's And it's not just cohabitation. It's basically all the different Alternate approaches to what used to be known as the nuclear family But you know when you and you when you and I grew up in the in the good old 1950s a mere four million people lived alone 1950 only four million people lived alone everybody else lived in nuclear families extended families whatever only about nine percent of households were single You know loners nowadays according to the 2011 census people who live alone are now 33 million Americans that makes up 28% of all US households. So people are living alone people are living in in and you know cohabitation, you know living together with it with with Their quote life partner. You don't have to get married anymore. You can just declare your life partner I mean thinking how much of a change that is used to be That in order to qualify for benefits pension health insurance stuff like that You had to be somebody's spouse if you wanted spousal benefits now You can just fill in say life partner and bang you get all the same benefits. So, you know, why bother to get married? Let me ask you a normative question, which you know, it's in my mind. It keeps popping up given the numbers and the change Good thing for the country Nobody knows nobody. No, I mean, it's definitely the thing. It's it's what's gonna keep happening I mean, you know Bradcoats and J. Fredell are not gonna start or stop it or have much of an impact on it All we can do is dissect it a little bit, but obviously if you get a situation where This is happening so exponentially and so fast It's almost like smoking before the surgeons general report came out and said hey, this is dangerous I mean, you know, we're we're embarking on half, you know 40 to 50 percent of all the kids in the country are now being born out of wedlock 50 percent for women under 30 40 percent nationwide. That's not good. Well, you know, it doesn't seem good If you're born into a marriage, then people are feel whether it's obligated or whether it's the right the correct conclusion or not People feel obligated to take care of you. I mean the marriage sort of calls on you to do that and society called on you to do it And if you're not married and you have a kid at a wedlock, it's not the same thing Is it and and that kid has it stands a much better chance of being You know with only one of his parents or none of his parents Yeah, well, and I do have some stats on that just so we don't sound like old fogies commenting I mean, you know it now less than one half of all American Children live in traditional intact nuclear families less than half of the kids We're the now the world's leader in fatherless families here in America just over 40 percent of America's children do not live with their biological fathers Meanwhile, and this is an amazing statistic Every time a new partner rotates in or out of a parent's life So you got a single mom was dating single dad is dating his secretary instead of his Movies coming out of Hollywood half of them. That's exactly and they almost endorse all that Yeah, so but the adolescent kids problems increased by 12 percent every time you bring in a new partner Interesting, so mom comes home and says, you know, hey John you're gonna you're gonna love my new partner Melvin and You know John doesn't love Melvin He kind of misses his dad and he starts acting out and after Melvin comes You know Martin and after Martin comes, you know Michael and whatever and that's just the end Yeah, so it's a profile in literature. It's a it's the angry kid the kid out of control Who says to this person who comes into the the household? You're not my dad. Yeah, there it is and and by definition. He's ticked off. Yeah, that's right and what you have now is a million children a year being affected by divorce and Then the question is, you know, how's that? How's that? What's the ripple effect of that? There's a there's a lady psychologist Sociologist named dr. Judith Wallerstein She did a famous follow-up study on the children of divorce and she went back and interviewed these kids One of your 30 years after they're no longer kids after their parents divorce and said, you know How did your parents divorce affect you and across the board? They hated it only one in ten said they felt any sense of relief after their parents divorce Otherwise, they would have rather their parents had stayed together and fought, you know Yeah, it's always what the parents say because they feel like it's good for them You know, dad wants to run off with his secretary or mom or their personal trainer or whatever So because it's you know, it seems like a positive thing for the parent they transpose it to think well This would be good for the kids. They didn't want to hear me and then dad fight all the time Yeah, it's something really selfish about it It's totally selfish and they had the and the kids would have rather heard the parents stay together and fight Then lose them either one. I don't want to lose either parent I would like to examine with you, you know the causations here There are multiple causations and try to figure out what has caused this and what will be causing, you know An increase later, which I believe will happen. But before we do that, I want to ask you one other question How does this you know, you're a matrimonial lawyer? You're you know, I don't want to tell you anything. You don't know Brad You're a matrimonial lawyer with no matrimony anymore. Yeah, there's no matrimony What about Lee Marvin? Is he around is he alive? Is he with us? I mean other claims possible in a non marital household on Hawaii We don't have common law marriage and we don't have we don't have that sort of a claim you would have to have You know some sort of an independent contractual problem to say that it say you were joint tenants in a house You're writing to yeah Yeah, and so it's not just living with somebody does not give you not give you rights in their and their property Although ironically if you've been married five years, but you live together five years before that Sometimes they'll bootstrap on the prior period of cohabitation, but just cohabitation alone does not does not do it So the but you gave stats already doesn't this affect your practice the number you you can't have as many divorces If you don't have as many marriages And I'm fortunately I'm almost as old as you are and I'm gonna be retiring before too long So it's not no, but it is definitely it is definitely a problem problem for divorce lawyers You know and automation may be a problem for lawyers period, but definitely The front end of the pipeline and people are always saying, you know, you know, how's the divorce business? It's really how's the marriage business? It's the front end of the pipeline that you know because we're the cooks and fry firm is well known We're you know, we're gonna have plenty of business if there's people getting to work What happens it gets replaced by other areas paternity paternity calendar for kids born out of wedlock is expanding Exponentially the domestic abuse calendar is expanding exponentially Because again stuff like we talked about, you know Society and religion and you know, you know contemporary social groupings, you know frowned on you know You know people men beating on women, you know, and it kind of rained it in Now, you know, if everybody just sort of living together and nobody even knows who's married or who's a real couple anymore Anyway, and the neighbors don't are exactly sure who's coming and going and you know There's less of those kind of factors raining it in so so and and there's other factors that are causing the increase in domestic violence And and the increase in recognizing domestic violence When you say violence you mean criminal violence that goes to the criminal court Well, it goes it goes to the TRO courts ever restraining order first you get restraining orders against people Yeah, and sometimes that gets abused because that gets used in in custody cases because you want to get a leg up in custody In order to avoid with otherwise otherwise the court has a predilection for joint joint custody and people who don't like that sometimes file TROs and people are getting hit for real file TROs. So that's expanded tremendously I hire criminal prosecutor former prosecutors and public defenders from my firm now Really because they have so much experience in the area. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know, I sat on a jury When when they found out my politics and believe it or not, they were they were permitted to ask me my politics They challenged me off rentorily, but it was an abuse case and I'm saying gosh How did you know how did this happen? How did a family living together with a child and all that get into abuse? It's like it's like, you know in my day and our day. This just didn't happen Yeah, you know, it was it was hideous to even think about it. Yeah, it happens much more regularly now and it happens here in the land of aloha Yeah, it's pretty common actually it's it's common amongst the military is common amongst some of the ethnic groups It's not it's not at all unusual in your way. Let's talk about the factors Let's talk about, you know all the causation factors and how they where they come from how they have grown What causes them and how they work together, you know, how they interact to provide a You know a troubled stew so to speak Well, what we're gonna have going forward is we're gonna have a new uncharted territory where the traditional nuclear family is far less prevalent and Other stuff's gonna spring up in its place and we don't know how that how that's gonna work. I mean gay marriage great You know, I mean great for the participants for everybody. Let's get to live the life They want but it's a great for procreation and then continuing society, you know, that's again That's a sort of a jump ball. Nobody's nobody's really got the answers to any of these kind of questions There's a lot of marriage killer factors that I can just go right through them It's it's it's I know you like to be a little more freestyle and you can stop me whatever you like I do indeed, but the you know the internet has created more options for more partners There's no need to settle on matching matching match dot com all that stuff So why get married if you can find a new partner on the internet in 10 minutes? You know the other thing I'd like to add to that and maybe you can comment on it Is it's not only that you can find a new partner in 10 minutes with these matching, you know Matching sites and matching technology you can lose the partner in 10 minutes to good play I mean, you know the big underlying statement there is it comes and goes because as fast as you can find partner a You can find a replacement in partner b same way So that works in favor of shorter term revolving Relationships and the accompanying mindset that goes with that rather than longer term committed very little relationships. So that's one Sex obviously a huge factor in the old days, you know when you and I were growing up if you wanted to have sex You got married I mean literally had them, you know had to get married to your college girlfriend or whatever And people did they married their college girlfriend now the age for first for first marriages is like 29 for guys 27 for women whereas it used to be 23 and 21 So that's a point their postponing marriage You know sex is readily available You know, I Not in that generation obviously, but so I can hook up I can go to a bar on a given Thursday night and hook up and I can have sex that night and never see her again Or see her on a you know on a rotating basis if you want. He's in my black book. How does that affect? This relationship mean it sounds like sex without love Sex without any commitment sex without commitment. Is that what you're talking about? Well, that seems to be what the millennials in particular seem to be headed that way Ibronically our generation had more sex Than some of these subsequent generations that will quantitative quality and quantitatively But the the millennials seem to like the hookup approach and the you know in the sex without without commitment sort of thing And then you know then they find the right ones There's all kinds of theoretically. I mean theoretically. It's not clear exactly how Finding the right one is affected by sex without commitment for a period of time And by the way, I just just just was a footnote. I believe that sex with commitment is better sex That's just my view. Well, that's been that's not just for you That's traceable I mean all the all the sex therapists will tell you that the more you know your partner's body and the more Comfortable you are in that situation the better sex is going to be. Yeah, so there's no question about that Another marriage killer factor religion, you know religion was you know a major major cornerstone of America It's our marriage was essentially a religious institution, but now everybody's tracking the decline of religion You know atheism is atheism and and agnosticism way up, you know Catholicism way down And Europe including Europe right you just took a trip. That's right You must have seen the same thing where people do not show up in church Religion is not as beautiful cathedrals with nobody empty all the time empty. Yeah. Yeah, no another factor recession Millennials grew up right during the throws of the recession They've had there's some amazing statistics on millennials here that I've got that is kind of a Deviation but this is astounding when I I love statistics, and I mean I'm always doing these new books so millennials suffered a 68% drop in real net worth from 1984 to 2009 and 24% of 18 to 30 year olds and moved back in with their parents at least wants to save cash the old go live in your parents garage thing The average net worth of the average millennial is below $8,000 you imagine a net worth below $8,000 Incredible it's okay. If your parents are putting the food on the table. Yeah, I guess but yeah student debt now 1.6 trillion It's just it's been really really tough for these millennials So they can't they can't even afford to you know take a girl out to dinner much You know for maybe for anything other than pizza get her a pay. Yeah And you know much less and you know have a home or a car to a driver to or a car to start to family Or you know buy a home, you know, they're they're out of lock on a lot of this stuff And let me add that you know cars seem to be the first priority rather than the home Maybe it's always been thus, you know, but you find I find these young people They'll spend an incredible amount of money on a fancy car, but they won't think about buying a home Yeah, it's just out of their reach and out of their thought process home owners It's out of the out of the out of the spectrum for a lot of a lot of it was always hard in Hawaii It's always hard brutal in a way harder now. Absolutely in brood The other one of the other big factors is the rise of what I call the she economy And I've talked about this on your shows before the rapid rise in education career and monetary advancement for women Which makes them far less dependent on men The widens the gender gap I mean it used to be that you know that each gender knew what they were doing now that women are out earning the men and And taking charge of their own lives the major change for women is that they now You know want to marry out of love Instead of instead of out of necessity used to be that you know, dad was the only one bringing home the paycheck mom was raising the kids You know wife and even a happy wife couldn't get away because she because she didn't have the financial resources to do it upside down Now the women are out earning the guys half the time. Yeah, they're getting more advanced degrees in college and then and then in Higher degree higher education. Yeah, there's more female lawyers and doctors coming out I mean the women are smarter to support their husbands. Yeah, who become mr. Mom. Yeah, I mean frequently I know a number of families where that is that's actually the good thing is when guys get in touch You know more in touch with their parenting skills and do that of course That's that's positive But it's again. It's a major change and it certainly allows women the ability to cut and run They didn't used to have in the 1950s or 1960s, right? And it's interesting to note that it from a divorce lawyer's perspective women file two-thirds of all divorces and Not only in Hawaii, but in the u.s. They said change was it something else before it's been pretty consistent And they may now be going up But it's always the women that seem to be the most dissatisfied guys Will stay in even a bad marriage as long as they're getting fed regularly as long as they get sitting there lazy boy Louder and watch sports or you know that to them. That's a good marriage where whereas women want this bizarre concept of communication whatever They want you know, they want to be able to do another show in that way exactly Yeah, so even the marital institution the marital relationship or you know the cohabitation relationship It's different now because of the economics because you don't necessarily find this dependence by women As a matter of fact, you might find dependence by men about that. Yeah, they they are dependent economically on their wives not just economically Guys guys need women more than women need guys you heard it here. It's going to be on the final exam It's a very important point. Well when I do a divorce for a 60 year old 50 or 60 year old guy First thing he wants to know is you know, where can I find a new wife? I mean, you know what the guys will get remarried if after falling divorce within three years women Oftentimes if they're 50 or 60 years old at the time of divorce, they're not going to get remarried at all They just they have no desire. They've been taking care of guys all their lives They're you know, they're doing they don't want to keep cooking and cleaning for the loser guys So women won't get oftentimes won't get remarried all younger women. Maybe yes But once they've had the kids and gotten what you know, they're biological determinative out of the way Then putting up with guys is tough. So so they file for two-thirds of the divorces They don't remarry nearly as fast Women are much more self-sufficient. They've got social groupings That start way way earlier, you know everything from the junior league and the pta and the sororities and the book clubs And you know women have women friends Guys friends are basically made through team sports when they're going through college or the fraternity house Or their office environment that you know, the junior partner wanting to become not the same thing And then all of a sudden the guy turns 50 or 60 years old and he looks around and other than his golfing buddies He doesn't you know, he doesn't have any social network at all So guys have got to get with the program. That's really true. Yeah Yeah, so I mean really so this this changes things dramatically But what it points out also is in our world today Um, and we can talk about other age groups if you're 50 or 60 and you're on your own It's doable It's doable. Oh, totally. You're not a miserable person. You're not, you know, you're gonna fall down a well You you can live you can get along Um, assuming your economics are acceptable. You can live by yourself without being married I'm without being in a cohabitation. Am I right? Yeah, totally right This is not always the case, you know before a lot of a lot of couples a lot of individuals were scrambling to stay alive Well, and you didn't stay alive as long so you figure. Hey, you know, I'm you know, I'm 55 years old I'm going to be dead by 60. Anyway, you know, I might as well just hang in there for a while I say well marriage now the expectation of all of us that grew up in the 60s, you know, you know Drug sex rock and roll peace love personal freedom Uh, you know, we think we're going to extend that into our 80s, you know I mean, I don't know who we're really kidding but but and we do so actually Baby boomers are the are you have got the highest rate of divorce now of any other cohort out of the life Yeah, I mean, I just I want to go back and having exactly what I wanted out of life Just the way I always have I wanted to just all fall into my lap and it's it's really interesting It may not be feasible, but it's traceable. It's traceable. And then Boomers they aren't second or third marriages. They're not going to get remarried So they may be the one of the highest divorcing quadrants in society But they're certainly not going to they're not a heavy remarriage market because you know, the woman loses her alimony If she's if she gets from the first marriage if she married the second time They lose some of their government benefits, etc. Etc. They lose a lot of their personal freedom and why bother? Yeah, so you've named probably eight or 10 different factors and they're not necessarily Connected, you know, they don't one doesn't trip off the other They're like independent factors all happening at the same time and my question to you is How do they interact? How do they, you know, how do they create the porridge that we live in socially? Family wise household wise And you know, where where they where are they taking us? That's a hard question. That's the 64 000 million dollar question Because there's no roadmap for this for society and there are there are societies like the the Scandinavian societies A lot of times women are raising their single women are raising their own kids there And it seems to work out okay And That's it's kind of an accepted deal their social structures You know, they have daycare centers that did pop up and take care of it How that's going to work out in inner cities of the us Um, you know with some of our minority communities where you got single moms trying to raise kids and you know, you get the the Unexpected consequences of of you know, a single mom gets more money in food stamps and government benefits Then if she's if she's got a live-in partner So that foster that that fosters them to continue that lifestyle instead of even trying to find a linkage And you know, who knows whether nuclear family linkages is the right thing But it seems to have it seems like there is A benefit to having a male Role model a consistent male role model in a in a especially raising male children in a in a cohesive You know family style unit that seems to be kind of undeniable and without that you got societal problems I mean these kids kids that are raised by single moms as hard as these single moms try they you know, they Kids have more problems. Yeah, so we're gonna have to figure our way around that as a society Well, it's hard because I don't think anybody's really working on except you and me right here We've always got to solve another way further but a couple of things, you know, you mentioned inner cities and that That's not only an economic You know dichotomy it's it's it's also It's a geographical dichotomy and if you ask me cold and I have no evidence on this about whether these What we call interchangeable families are greater on the west coast and west coast culture Or on the east coast and the big cities on the east coast I would guess that the interchangeability is easier and thus more ubiquitous on the west coast than the east coast Is there anything to that? What do you think? Well, I you know, I've been raised on the west coast and uh, and you know West coast has always been the you know, the american wringo west young man. I mean, it's always been the more freestyle Freestyle liberal whatnot. Um, although inner cities and in the east coast affluent inner cities have probably got very similar problems It's really the flyover stand and we're watching. I mean, I've never seen this country be more polarized We've got a bunch of people that believe in old-style american families, you know, white middle class nuclear families, you know with a Central community town-based focus and we're tired of hearing about what all the elites are saying about on the coast And and then we got the progressives on the coast that are driving their teslas and and and And you know, and they they think they're the the new wave So we really have got I mean, you know, look at what's happening politically in america Well that you take me that you took me at my last question. That is exactly where we need to go here in this discussion So, okay, we have access hollywood You know remember that the bus the bus thing with uh, donald trump right when And we have, you know, a kind of an a moral Kind of approach that he has and yet a lot of his followers his base are They're, you know, supposedly moral they they come from Evangel evangelist communities and religious communities That's that's hard to put together, but I just wonder if there's my of my, you know, my freewheeling question for you How does these how do these trends? affect Say an election of a of demagogue like donald trump. How how do they affect politics today? They gotta they got to be they're not static. They're moving their dynamic And they'll be at least as dynamic in the future. How do they affect american politics? Well, that may be above my pay grade But but uh, you you definitely have got a very weird situation where you've got a guy like donald trump Who is not exactly a bastion of truth on our morality and you know and the americans standards In fact, he's kind of the opposite and yet all the people that believe in that see him as their savior as compared to Whatever they seem to view as being worse, uh, you know god forbid We should have a woman president god forbid. We should have a a Progressive woman president. We you know, you know I I can I can only tell you one thing that is kind of interesting from you know the studies I do because I'm not a political science guy There is a definite phenomena going on where there's a self selecting out of of Quadrants of society you're much more likely to get divorced Marry early have kids early get divorced if you are Less high school educated drop out before high school or just end at high school education If you're married go on to graduate degrees you're a doctor or lawyer an indian chief whatever and you find you find Somebody else who's introduced to somebody's wedding up, you know on the hamptons or whatever All of a sudden you've got a more stable marriage and those marriages are so the separate the gap My point is the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening in America Actually, the southeast is who is trump's big base They're actually having the tougher time which is which is what's so counterintuitive about a lot of this because they are They're the ones that are getting divorced trying to raise single kids living in a trailer You know having a real difficult time and yet they see trump as being their their guy And and then the liberal elites Who are doing much better and they and they can do better. I mean it's getting worse It used to be and I'm sure you remember this, you know, you come in as a as a partner in a big law firm You would maybe meet a cute young, you know Secretary and think oh because guys are always more attracted viscerally to women. Oh, you know, she's pretty and you know Next thing, you know, you got a partner law firm marrying a secretary or paralegal. Well, that doesn't happen anymore That's another factor, isn't it? Yeah now the lawyers are marrying female lawyers And they're finding each other on on dating sites You can go on dating sites where you've got to be a certified millionaire to qualify and you can only search out other millionaires So it's not just, you know, the the goofy ones the tender about, you know, who's going to put out tonight or tomorrow night It's actually a way to self select the elites Finding more elites and sticking with the elites and the have nots getting stuck in this in this and in this Bottomless pit stuck to the tar baby. Yeah, and in that law firm these days. No lawyer is going to date a secretary That's much too dangerous and his partners would tell him do not do that. That's right That creates all kinds of problems for him the law firm and so forth and Gee, God knows what happens in that scenario Well, thank you so much Brad. It's always great to talk to you I get a kick out of talking to you, Jay. They're they're interesting Interesting topics and then prospects with with questionable solutions So Red coats a lot questionable solutions. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you, Jay. Bye