"The intended protection against sudden eviction should not rest on fictitious legal distinctions or genetic history, but instead should find its foundation in the reality of family life. In the context of eviction, a more realistic, and certainly equally valid, view of a family includes two adult lifetime partners whose relationship is long term and characterized{**40 Misc 3d at 632} by an emotional and financial commitment and interdependence. This view comports both with our society's traditional concept of 'family' and with the expectations of individuals who live in such nuclear units (see also, 829 Seventh Ave. Co. v Reider, 67 NY2d 930, 931-932 [interpreting 9 NYCRR 2204.6 (d)'s additional 'living with' requirement to mean living with the named tenant 'in a family unit, which in turn connotes an arrangement, whatever its duration, bearing some indicia of permanence or continuity' (emphasis supplied)])." (Id. at 211.)
In 1995, the case of Sirota v Sirota (164 Misc 2d 966 [1995]) was decided. In that case [*5]the adult respondents, aged 27 and 31 years, lived in the marital home with their mother and cared for her until she died. Upon her death, the petitioner father, who had previously vacated the family residence and whose divorce action was apparently abated by death of the respondents' mother, sought to evict the respondents. Although this was not a licensee case but rather a landlord-tenant case, in finding that the respondents were not tenants the court held, reminiscent of Brennecke, that