Imagine divorcing someone, but continuing to live with them. Could you do it? One Japanese divorce lawyer told ABEMA Prime that he often sees couples separate on paper while continuing to live together as roommates, mainly for financial reasons or to stay close to their children.
The unofficial term for the arrangement is dōkyo rikon (同居離婚; “cohabiting divorce”). Japan recorded 179,068 divorces in 2025, down 38% from the 2002 peak. As the divorce rate falls, however, some experts say that those who do get divorced are increasingly likely to stay together, often for very practical reasons.
Divorced, still under one roof
A very public example of dōkyo rikon is the comedy duo “Hamako and Terako” (はまこ・テラこ), who have performed manzai (漫才; double-act comedy) together since 2009. Hamako and Terako divorced in 2018 after 10 years of marriage but continued living together, citing financial reasons.
“The biggest reason is money. Living alone costs money, you know? Whether it’s rent or something else,” Terako said.
For other couples, cohabitation is less about saving money and more about raising children.
One woman, who appeared on ABEMA Prime under the pseudonym Tsuzuki, said she divorced her husband three years ago but continues to live with her ex and their 11-year-old son under a special agreement. She emphasized that they are not in a jijitsukon (事実婚; common-law marriage), and said the arrangement will end when their son goes to university.
Under their agreement, either person must give two months’ notice before moving out, and they divide living expenses according to terms they agreed on. The former spouses reviewed the arrangement with a gyōseishoshi (行政書士; administrative scrivener) and worked it out between them.
Actress Katō Rosa also brought public attention to dōkyo rikon in August 2025. Appearing on NTV, she said she and former professional footballer Matsui Daisuke had divorced but continued living together while raising their two sons.
“We’re off each other’s family register now, and we’re carrying on living together in a new form of us,” Katō said. Matsui described the divorce as “just a matter of paper.”
A Togetter roundup of the broadcast transcribed their comments side by side. Katō said, “I don’t think we’ll live together forever,” while Matsui said, “I think we’ll probably stay the same even after the kids leave home.”
How common is it?
No official data shows how many divorced couples continue to live together. But Saitō Takehiro (齋藤健博) of Ginza Saito Law Office, who says he has handled divorce consultations for more than 10,000 couples, told ABEMA that dōkyo rikon has become more common “to a degree you couldn’t have imagined before.” He said he is seeing the arrangement even among couples without children.
Official statistics show that divorce itself is becoming less common. Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) counted 179,068 divorces in 2025, down 6,836, or 3.7%, from 185,904 in 2024. The divorce rate was 1.50 per 1,000 people. Divorces peaked at 289,836 in 2002, and the MHLW describes recent annual totals as being “around 180,000.”
ABEMA’s segment opened by saying that one in three couples in Japan get divorced. That figure comes from comparing the number of divorces in a given year with the number of marriages in the same year: 179,068 divorces versus 489,119 marriages in 2025, or about 37%. But the two figures concern different groups of couples: most people divorcing in 2025 married years earlier. The calculation therefore does not measure the probability that any particular couple will divorce.
The official statistics also assume that divorce marks the end of a shared household. The MHLW tabulates divorces by the prefecture where the couple lived before separating and records the length of time they lived together, or dōkyo kikan (同居期間). There is no separate category for couples who divorce but remain under the same roof.
Why stay: rent, rising prices and the “wife” role
For some couples, the calculation is straightforward: moving out costs money.
Hayakawa Gomi (ハヤカワ五味), the ABEMA Prime MC and AI strategy executive at Mercari, pointed to high urban rents and changing income patterns as factors that can make the traditional marriage arrangement less attractive. Saitō, meanwhile, identified bukkadaka (物価高; rising prices) as a major factor behind the trend.
But money isn’t the only reason.
Takamatsu Nana (たかまつなな), head of Shōkasonjuku (笑下村塾), said some women, particularly outside major cities, feel pressure to appear publicly as “Mr. So-and-so’s wife.” For them, she said, divorce can provide a way to reject the social expectations attached to being a wife while maintaining a relationship with their children and former spouse.
Being able to say “he’s not my husband anymore” gives them a way to draw that boundary, she said.
Writer Sasaki Toshinao described the phenomenon as marriage coming “unbundled.” He argued that marriage has traditionally packaged romance, economics, and child-rearing into a single relationship. Dōkyo rikon separates those functions, letting couples end the legal marriage while keeping some of the relationships that came with it.
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The legalities: a system built for couples who separate
The problem is that the legal system was not designed around that arrangement.
Property division has no obvious cutoff date. Saitō said the basic rule is to divide assets accumulated during the marriage equally, with the date of separation generally serving as the baseline. But in a dōkyo rikon, where the couple remains physically together after divorcing, determining when their economic partnership actually ended can become a new legal question.
Civil Code revisions that took effect on April 1, 2026, extended the period for claiming property division from two years after divorce to five years, codified the principle of equal contributions to marital assets, and allowed divorcing parents to choose kyōdō shinken (共同親権; joint custody) for the first time.
Single-parent benefits depend on how a family actually lives, not simply what its paperwork says. MHLW guidance says that benefits for single parents are not available where a person is in a common-law marriage, which the ministry defines by whether society would regard the relationship as a shared life between a couple. Local authorities are instructed to assess the actual circumstances rather than relying solely on formal documents.
The MHLW’s guidance considers factors including cohabitation, frequent visits and regular financial support. It also says that an ex-spouse living in a separate unit of the same condominium building does not, by itself, establish a common-law marriage.
Tsuzuki, the woman who lives with her ex-husband and son, said she and her ex earn roughly the same amount and that she has never qualified for single-parent benefits.
A divorced couple living together can be legally treated as roommates, unless their relationship still functions like a marriage. Lawyer Hamakado Toshiya (濵門俊也) told Bengo4.com that the legal duties to live together and support one another end with divorce. But if the couple continues to live as spouses, a court or government agency can potentially recognize a common-law marriage.
That can have consequences. The couple may again be treated as having mutual financial obligations, while a relationship with a new partner could potentially raise claims of damages for infidelity.
Shared housing can create another problem: the mortgage doesn’t disappear when the marriage does. In a case discussed by PRESIDENT Online, an administrative scrivener and financial planner described a divorced couple who still owed ¥52 million (~$329K) of the ¥60 million (~$379K) they’d borrowed through a pea rōn (ペアローン; “pair loan”), in which both spouses take out linked mortgages on the same property.
The wife couldn’t refinance the debt alone on an annual income of ¥5 million (~$31.6K), so the husband continued paying ¥90,000 (~$570) a month in lieu of child support. Three years later, he wanted to remarry and sell the property, only to find that the condominium was worth less than the outstanding loan.
The problem may become increasingly relevant for younger homeowners. A January 2026 survey by the Japan Housing Finance Agency found that 35.3% of borrowers in their 20s and 30.9% of borrowers in their 30s had used a pair loan.
What about the benefits?
For many people discussing dōkyo rikon online, the question was less about why couples do it than what they might receive from doing so.
In the first 200 of 261 Yahoo comments analyzed, questions about single-parent benefits accounted for 33.5% of comments and 75.9% of empathetic reactions. The most-reacted-to comment, with 3,582 empathy reactions, questioned whether such families could receive benefits and suggested that some arrangements amounted to something resembling a sham marriage.
That single comment accounted for 38% of all empathy reactions in the sample.
The reaction highlights a tension at the heart of dōkyo rikon: the legal status of a family can change overnight, while the family’s actual living arrangements may remain almost exactly the same.
Rules or no rules
Saitō says the couples who enter dōkyo rikon without clearly defining the arrangement often end up in conflict.
“[They] drift along without clear rules and end up in another huge fight, and you could say that’s almost all of them,” he said.
Yet when asked whether he would recommend the arrangement, Saitō said yes.
Divorce, he argued, turns a person who was once a lifelong partner into “a stranger walking down the street.” Continuing to live together, by contrast, could create “a new future” for the relationship.
For couples willing to define what that future looks like, dōkyo rikon may offer a way to separate the legal institution of marriage from the economic, parental, and personal relationships that remain after it.
Keep reading
Sources
「色々お金がかかるので…」別れた後も同じ布団で就寝…増加する“同居離婚”弁護士が語るメリット・デメリットとは「ルールあいまいだとトラブルに」 ABEMA TIMES
令和７(2025)年 人口動態統計月報年計(概数)の概況 厚生労働省
離婚したのに､住んでいない家に月9万円…世帯年収1200万円だった”元夫婦”を縛り続ける｢ペアローン｣の地獄 PRESIDENT Online
住宅ローン利用者の実態調査【住宅ローン利用者調査（2026年１月調査）】 住宅金融支援機構
児童扶養手当の取扱いに関する留意事項について 厚生労働省
民法等改正について こども家庭庁 ひとり親家庭のためのポータルサイト
加藤ローサ、松井大輔氏との離婚を初公表 同居は継続中「新しい私たちのカタチで」 ORICON NEWS
「離婚したのに一緒に住む」加藤ローサさんと松井大輔さん 法的に2人の関係はどうなる？ 弁護士ドットコム
加藤ローサと松井大輔氏が離婚し現在も同居…2人のコメントから「松井が試合終了してることに気づかずグラウンドを彷徨ってる幽霊みたい」との例えが現れる Togetter
はまこ・テラこ Wikipedia