Thanks to cultural, economic and demographic change, the institutions of family and marriage have undergone dramatic developments over the past decades. ?The emancipation of the individual life course from traditional determining influence of factors such as gender and social or regional origin? (Strohmeier and Kuijsten, 2002:6) allow everyone to lead his or her ?own life? and consequently make individual choices regarding couple formation and organization of family life. Due to this evolution, post-modern western societies is characterised by a low level of union stability and growing pluralisation of living arrangements. Traditional marriage (defined as a long-lasting legal companionship of man and woman) is being replaced or alternated by other forms of partnership such as, for example, cohabitation…