ALIMONY – COHABITATION STATUTE. The statute that was finally obtained providing for alimony cutoff when the recipient’s cohabitation is proved never said anything about sexual relations being an actual indispensible element of the definition of cohabitation, but quite a number of people seem to have just assumed that it was. The Court of Appeals puts an end to this strangely widespread misconception in one of those unpublished opinions with a dissent that we see so often these days. In Brennan v. Albertson, unpublished, 27 VLW 240 (7/24/12), the trial court decided that a divorced wife who lived with another woman and her three children, jointly owning the house, should forfeit her alimony under §20-109(A) even though these two women who had thrown in their lots together as friends and for financial reasons were not even alleged to have had a sexual relationship. They do eat together as the whole family does, share chores, vacation together, and attend some events together, including church. The husband when he moved to end the spousal support alleged that there was a relationship analogous to marriage, but the court said no because it found no evidence of a sexual relationship. It had, however, lasted more than a year. Wife argued on appeal that a sexually intimate relationship was essential to the concept of “cohabitation analogous to marriage” for purposes of this statutory provision. But of course the cases in which the Court of Appeals seemed eager to go to great lengths, and perhaps some acrobatic contortions, to avoid finding a cohabitation analogous to marriage — and hence a danger to alimony — has painted many glosses on to those statutory words, and looked at all sorts of elements that go to make up such a thing. The majority of the Court now points out that the 2000 case Pellerin v. Pellerin, 31 Va. App. 753, ___ S.E.2d ___, seems to have said that sexual intimacy is not essential to a finding of statutory cohabitation, and emphasizes that when a statute uses the word “analogous” (of which this could indeed be the only example), it certainly does not mean “identical.” Just as said in the many cases that decided against finding cohabitation, the test requires looking at a “totality of the relationship.” Dissenting, Chief Judge Felton cleverly observes that something else can’t very well be analogous to marriage once you have officially defined marriage as a heterosexual relationship. The majority observes that the dissenter may have a point, but – you guessed it – that error was not assigned and can’t be raised now.