'Til Severance of Contract Do Us Part?
The "'til death do you part" part of marriage is an antiquated notion that should be abandoned, Paul Rampell argued in a Washington Post op-ed. Instead, marriage should be a "wedlease," in which couples agree to stay together for only a specified period of time.
The "legal structure of marriage" is in need of improvement, claims Rampell, who is a Palm Beach, Fla., lawyer specializing in estate planning. In particular, Rampell is concerned about the permanency aspect of marriage, which he describes as a deficiency of the institution.
"Marriage is a legal partnership that lasts a lifetime -- one lifetime to be exact, that of the first of the spouses to die," he wrote. "Generally speaking, that is a long time for any partnership. People, circumstances and all sorts of other things change. The compatibility of any two people over decades may decline with these changes to the point of extinction."
