Even though the number of married couples in Greece is one of the highest in the EU, the number of cohabiting partners is increasing as many couples wish a permanent cohabitation but in a more loose way than that established by marriage. Statistics have shown that the number of women in Greece at the age of 18-24 that chose to cohabit without getting married has tripled in the past thirty years (according to a research of the National Center of Social Research). In the past, the Greek society as well as the law disapproved of cohabitations without marriage. The main argument was that this would undermine the institution of marriage. Today this disapproval has been limited or even disappeared and on 26\/11\/2008 law 3719\/2008 \u201creforms for the family, the child, the society and other provisions\u201d was published in the Government Gazette and came into force. This way Greece, a country with one of the highest marriage rates in the E.U., follows the non compulsory to the Member States decision of the European Court of Human Rights, according to which, cohabitation falls within the scope of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights that protects private and family life. Despite the fact that, as aforementioned, Greece is a country with one of the highest marriage rates in the E.U., the increasing number of cohabitants and the social acceptance of cohabitation, made the legislative reform necessary. Although it cannot be said that the reforms introduced by law 3719\/2008 constitute a major breakthrough in Greece\u2019s family law and solve serious social problems such as cohabitation between same sex couples, they undoubtedly offer a wider spectrum of options to men and women and safeguard the rights of unmarried mothers and children born out of wedlock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even though the number of married couples in Greece is one of the highest in the EU, the number of cohabiting partners is increasing as many couples wish a permanent cohabitation but in a more loose way than that established by marriage. Statistics have shown that the number of women in Greece at the age […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[33],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-articles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n