There's an interesting debate going on right now in the UK. Like in the US and Canada, more people are living common law than getting married; currently one out of every six partnerships are common law relationships in England. And according to the English government, this trend is only slated to increase. Yet for all of these cohabitating partners, none are protected financially should the worst happen. So a Lord by the name of Baron Lester has decided to take it upon himself to introduce a bill to the UK Parliament later this year that may solve this dilemma.

The Lord may have his work cut out for him: 53 percent of common law couples in the UK believe that they have the same legal rights as spouses (when this isn't the case at all), and a British Attitudes Survey found that "nine in ten people believe that cohabitees should have a right to financial protection if their relationship is long-term, involves prioritizing one partner's career, or includes children."

What do you think? Should dating couples who live together be protected by the law? What if one of the partners dies, or the relationship ends? Share your thoughts in the comments.

_{Source: Robins, Jon. The Observer. Lord fights to give legal rights to cohabitees. July 13, 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jul/13/familyfinance.law}

In a research study undertaken by Canada's McGill University and published in this month's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, men who hadn't 'planned' ways to deal with a pretty and single woman while in a relationship with another were more tempted than those who had.

The study ran 724 heterosexual college-aged men and woman in serious relationships through a battery of seven 'temptation' tests to see how each person fared when faced with an attractive and single person of the opposite sex. One test found that men were twelve percent less likely to forgive their girlfriend if they'd already met a single and attractive woman, yet when the women were given the same scenario but with the roles reversed, the gals were eighteen percent more likely to forgive their boyfriends.