No. Georgia courts will not enforce a promise of support given in exchange for living together as an unmarried couple.
Alimony Requires a Marriage
Alimony is support for a spouse, “an allowance out of one party’s estate, made for the support of the other party when living separately.” OCGA 19-6-1(a). A couple who never married has no alimony claim.
A Promise of Support for Living Together Is Void
Under OCGA 13-8-1, “[a] contract to do an immoral or illegal thing is void.” In Rehak v. Mathis, 239 Ga. 541 (1977), a woman who had lived with a man for eighteen years, cooking and cleaning for him on his promise to support her for life, sued for the value of those years. The Georgia Supreme Court refused, holding that “neither a court of law nor a court of equity will lend its aid to either party to a contract founded upon an illegal or immoral consideration”; unmarried cohabitation was that consideration. Likewise, in Long v. Marino, 212 Ga. App. 113 (1994), an implied promise to support a woman in exchange for cohabitation and sexual relations “was unlawful.” The Court of Appeals notes that fornication is no longer a crime but applies Rehak until the Supreme Court says otherwise. Cates v. Brown, 357 Ga. App. 326 (2020).
What Survives
A claim that does not rest on the relationship survives. In Crooke v. Gilden, 262 Ga. 122 (1992), a written agreement between partners to share the cost and equity of a house was enforced: “[n]othing in the contract casts upon either of the parties the responsibility to perform any illegal activity.” And in Cates, a woman recovered for her contributions to a restaurant and two houses shared with her partner of fifteen years, because any sexual involvement was “incidental” to those contributions “rather than required by it.”
So put any financial arrangement with a partner in a written agreement that stands on its own.
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