Socio-Psychological consequences of unregistered marriages

Abstract

In modern societies unregistered marriage is becoming the main alternative form of marital relations. In many cases, unregistered marriages precede marriages registered with the civil registry office, which is confirmed by the results of sociological studies. Thus, almost 90% of couples in Germany first live in an unregistered marriage and only then enter into a legal marriage. If in Great Britain in the 1960s only 5% of women lived together with their future husbands before marriage, then in the 1990s - almost 70% (Stasyuk, 2009). In Russia, in 2002, 9.8% of marriages were not registered with the civil registry office (3.3 million couples). And in 2010, already 13% of married couples (4.4 million) were in an unregistered marriage (Blonin et.al.,2015).

The statistics provided demonstrate the significant role that unregistered marriage plays in the life of modern society. In this regard, there is interest in studying the legal and socio-psychological aspects of unregistered marriage, which are currently becoming increasingly relevant, but are not widely covered in scientific literature.