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"  Over Monday night football, a dinner of takeout eggplant Parmesan, and a bottle of pinot noir last November in their Manhattan apartment, Audrey Zimmerman felt a familiar surge of resentment as her boyfriend of five years stared blankly at the TV screen. Once again, after she&amp;#039;d suggested a winter getaway, he&amp;#039;d offered his usual unenthusiastic &amp;quot;Sure, I guess&amp;quot; in reply, prompting Zimmerman to ruminate on everything else that felt off about their relationship: their lack of regular sex; his mother&amp;#039;s constant insults, like &amp;quot;Congratulations on your promotion, but we&amp;#039;d rather you have babies.&amp;quot; The couple planned to get married in a few years, but clearly they needed help. Zimmerman, 38, a graphic designer, had toyed with the idea of therapy, but maybe there was another route. Her lawyer, Ann-Margaret Carrozza, had mentioned that she drafted cohabitation agreements- Carrozza called them &amp;quot;love contracts&amp;quot;- to help couples sync up their relationship expectations. So over two sessions in Carrozza&amp;#039;s office, the duo hashed out the details of a legal document that would define their life together. On Zimmerman&amp;#039;s wish list: one international trip a year, sex three times a week, and he had to defend Zimmerman to his mother. And the biggie: Given that Zimmerman had passed over lucrative job opportunities in Chicago five years prior to move to New York City with her financier boyfriend, if they broke up she wanted $15,000 for every year they&amp;#039;d been together to compensate for the lost income she would have earned. He offered clauses of his own, too: monthly date nights, one do-nothing hangout day, and regular sit-downs to review their finances. If either party didn&amp;#039;t comply with the contract&amp;#039;s terms- say, if he dumped Zimmerman and refused to pay the annual $15,000- the other could sue. Sound Romantic? Their contract has improved their relationship, insists Zimmerman: &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve made it clear what&amp;#039;s important to us. Now we can enjoy our time together because we don&amp;#039;t argue over everything.&amp;quot; Since he suggested a trip to Mexico, she no longer gets worked up when he wants to be a homebody. As for sex, they&amp;#039;re having more of it. &amp;quot;Initially the whole thing was kind of weird,&amp;quot; Zimmerman concedes. &amp;quot;No one wants to think you&amp;#039;re doing it in anticipation of a train wreck, but it&amp;#039;s been a tool to learn how to live together. It&amp;#039;s like our marriage training.&amp;quot; Another New Yorker created a contract in 2010 with her longtime live-in boyfriend, with whom she co-owns an apartment, after she got fed up with his late nights. &amp;quot;He would roll in at 5 a.m., sometimes wasted, which is disrespectful,&amp;quot; says the 35-year-old editor. She&amp;#039;d threaten to lock him out; they&amp;#039;d argue- until they decided to put it all down on paper. With the help of the site LegalZoom, they drew up a document on their own. Now, if he comes home after 4 a.m., he knows that he&amp;#039;ll be sleeping it off in their building&amp;#039;s hallway. &amp;quot;Then, since we were doing it, we added how we&amp;#039;d split the apartment and furniture if we were to break up,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I wouldn&amp;#039;t expect we&amp;#039;d ever go to court, but it made it feel more real. It&amp;#039;s so easy to say you&amp;#039;re going to do something and not be held accountable.&amp;quot; Perhaps this litigious phenomenon was inevitable. Considering that 74 percent of U.S. women will live with a partner before 30, according to a 2013 report from the National Center for Health Statistics, with many bringing their own assets to the table, it makes sense that some are seeking out prenuptial-like agreements, even if there are no nuptials to speak of. Nearly 40 percent of divorce lawyers say they&amp;#039;ve noticed an increase in these agreements, according to a recent poll by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. They can be dizzyingly exhaustive and include clauses about vacation and housework schedules, sleeping and exercise habits, TV viewing- you name it. But are they a hedge against potentially empty &amp;quot;Honey, I&amp;#039;ll change!&amp;quot; promises or an excuse to bring out your spontaneity-squashing control freak? And how do you enforce whether someone is, say, not doing the dishes enough, anyway? &amp;quot;If it&amp;#039;s legal and not against public policy, it&amp;#039;s enforceable,&amp;quot; says Kenneth Altshuler, a Portland, Maine- based family law attorney and past president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. (Except sex obligations, which could be construed as a form of prostitution.) It&amp;#039;s fair game to sue over who should pay for property taxes or car repairs, but getting a judge to rule on whether your boyfriend owes you the $100 he agreed to pay if he exceeded his weekly allowance of Sports-Center is a tougher sell. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never seen any of these go to trial,&amp;quot; says Carrozza. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;d probably end up settling.&amp;quot; For couples uninterested in a wedding, cohabitation agreements can be a form of marriage lite: You don&amp;#039;t get alimony or income tax breaks, or inherit your partner&amp;#039;s money, but you can decide what parts of your lives you want to merge, like retirement accounts and life insurance plans. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a way to say &amp;#039;I believe in the relationship, so I&amp;#039;m willing to offer a financial commitment,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; explains Bari Weinberger, a divorce lawyer in Parsippany, New Jersey. But if you do want to marry, will the contract help? While it can be dressed up as &amp;quot;motivational,&amp;quot; there&amp;#039;s still no escaping the fact that it&amp;#039;s a list of conditions for keeping love\u2014which can backfire, cautions Steven Stosny, Ph.D., a psychotherapist in Washington, D.C., and the author of How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It: &amp;quot;Do you really want your partner to take you to dinner because he signed an agreement, or because he wants to?&amp;quot; Maria Cognetti, a divorce lawyer in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, says her contract clients are often coming from a place of caution. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re usually thinking, &amp;#039;I have to protect what I have,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she says. Oklahoma City business coach Aprille Franks-Hunt, 37, was relieved that she and her ex had signed a contract when they ended up parting after four years together. &amp;quot;It could have gotten messy,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;but we left with what we came with and split what we&amp;#039;d gotten together.&amp;quot; When she tells friends about her contract, Zimmerman realizes that it can come off like a cold approach to love. But if they&amp;#039;d gone to counseling, she says, &amp;quot;it would have been, &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s talk about our feelings.&amp;#039; This is more of a guarantee: There&amp;#039;s something powerful about signing on the dotted line. It&amp;#039;s the difference between promises and results.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/advice/a9214/long-term-relationships-love-contracts/>