The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Imagine this happening to you. You’re a widow “of a certain age.” After years of being single again, you meet a compatible widower and find love. You date for a long time and seem perfect for each other. You move into his place, and you live together for 11 years.

All goes well until, late one night, your significant other, announces he has found someone else, and he orders you out.  It’s the middle of the night. You must leave. Never mind that it’s your furniture that fills the spacious apartment.  It’s his name on the lease, and, according to the law as it stands right now, even after all those years, he can do this – cast you out, carrying what you can stuff into a single suitcase.

This isn’t a made-up case or a soap on daytime TV. This happened to a good friend of mine. Let’s call her Barbara.  And she isn’t an isolated case. What happened to her at the hands of her Significant Other has happened to many other seniors, especially women.

Fortunately, she could find safe lodging with her adult daughter’s family in a Boston suburb. Would you have such a place of refuge?  Even with that option for Barbara, the rude eviction was upending. Barbara was terrified and devastated, both emotionally and physically. This strong and resilient woman was reduced to tears on our den couch. How could he do that? After so many years, did she have no rights? The answer, sadly, is precious few.

As it turns out, long-term cohabitors are not entitled by law to due process. If they want protections, they must create their own legally-binding agreements.  Unless these agreements are written and filed in court, they never go into effect.

Massachusetts has recognized such written cohabitation agreements since 1998. Still, they are rarely executed, leaving seniors or other cohabitants with no due process to protect them from summary eviction. So my dear friend Barbara resolutely set about finding a solution, too late for herself but, she hopes, in time to help others similarly vulnerable.

She received robust support from Veronica Wiseman of Sharon TV and from family law attorneys. State Representative Ted Phillips of Sharon took up the cause and helped develop legislative language giving tenant rights to all cohabitants whether or not they are on the deed or lease. And with that language, they have the right for due process, not simply immediate eviction. Leaders of the Mass. Landlords Association are also on board.

Bill Number H1933 was heard Tuesday before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary. It would prevent the party on the lease or deed from evicting a cohabitor without going though a court process. The legislature should pass the bill before the end of this session.

While Barbara’s focus is on seniors, she hopes judges in all cases would take into consideration how long parties have been living together, what activities they’ve shared to further a life together, and their level of economic interdependence.

Barbara is a fighter, and she fully intends to take the issue to senior housing, community centers, and local news outlets and let others know she is building a movement. The outrageous way that X treated her has made her a force to be reckoned with.

It’s a modest but crucial proposal – defining cohabitors as tenants and entitled to due process protections – and it should be a no-brainer. But, as with many other legislative matters, it needs broad outside support. Which is why I urge my Massachusetts readers to contact their own legislators, and tell them to support this change.