Brad Pitt tells Parade why he won't marry Angie, his fears for his family and his favorite place for sex. YourTango.com's Celebrity Love blog has the highlights.
Martina Navratilova is undergoing a wicked breakup from girlfriend Toni Layton. The two dated for eight years and when they split Navratilova offered a settlement of $200,000. Layton felt she deserved more and is threatening suit (and blackmail). We suppose that it's not a divorce because Florida doesn't recognized gay marriage but it feels a lot like a divorce.
If moving in together is a conscious objection to having the government involved in your union, the thought of contracts and judges may be particularly irksome. But for better or worse, the institution of marriage has laws that govern things like property rights if the couple splits. No matter how committed your bodies, hearts and souls are, if you're living together as romantic partners, to the State, you might as well be roommates. In divorce proceedings, the court is apt to assume equal entitlement—or liability—for both partners, but if you separate having never signed a marriage certificate or a contract, it doesn't matter which assets you mixed or didn't, it's one person's word against another.
If it weren't for the rules, and the willingness of two people to respect each other by following those rules, alternative relationships would simply self-destruct. It would be relationship anarchy. Occasionally, the rules are even broken. And sometimes that's ok, too. After all, every hook-up is different than the one that came before, and so with that in mind, all romantic and sexual encounters should probably be judged independently of one another.
