You don't even have to sign a contract to end up in this situation. In California at least, just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married. That needs to be fixed. Marriage should absolutely be a contractual agreement where one party is fully aware what they're giving up, signing over, or potentially losing, not something you end up in through no fault of your own.

EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.

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dillondoyle a day ago | parent | next [-]

this "just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married" is completely false and a myth. Especially in California.

Only a few states have something like the common-law 'marriage' you picture - but it's a really high bar.

There needs to consideration AND usually clear intent to marry (w/ nuance of course);

You can't simply fall into this by happenstance because you cohabitate for {n} amount of years.

California does have a (ever barrowing) Marvin Action.

But it's an incredibly high bar and not family court

You need to prove that essentially a contract exists between the parties; * e.g. consideration *

https://www.wgslawfirm.com/family-law/divorce-mediation/2025...

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OkayPhysicist a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You need to really fuck up to end up common-law married. You are simply wrong about California (we don't do common law marriage at all), and in all jurisdictions I'm aware of that do have common law marriages, you need to present yourself as married in order for there to be any claim.

That's not some "oh, we live together, and under old-timey understandings that means we're married" requirement. That's publicly making a pattern of referring to each other as your spouses, often including at least some public documentation. Common law marriage is much more about protecting people who failed to dot their 'i's and cross their 't's when registering their marriage than it is about surprising a breakup partner with divorce precedings.

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wahern a day ago | parent | next [-]

Depending on the state, you don't need to refer to each other as a spouse, just that people get (or could get) the impression you're spouses.

My father's last "marriage" was like this. After several divorces he was dead set on never getting married again, made sure only his (or her) name was on any purchases, and made sure his friends knew the situation. After a messy breakup where he discovered she had been diverting money for drugs and hiding bills, her lawyer managed to convince an Alabama court to find a common law marriage. Not long afterward she ended going to prison for arson after setting aflame some of my father's personal and real property, and his dog[1], in piques of spite. I think those felony convictions happened prior to or at least concurrent with the common law marriage proceedings.

Of course, his real mistakes occurred before he ever started cohabitating. Common law marriage rules were far down the list of wrong turns. But in any event, ironically a few years later Alabama abolished common law marriage.

[1] Dog survived after heroic efforts by, IIRC, University of Alabama, but had pretty severe scaring.

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gamblor956 a day ago | parent [-]

All states in the U.S. that currently recognize or formerly recognized common law marriage require the couple to present themselves as a married couple, either by using the same last name, sharing bank account, or referring to each other as husband and wife, in addition to cohabitation.

	▲	wahern a day ago \| parent [-]
		It's a factual inquiry. There's no magic thing that's sufficient or necessary, though the things you list tend to strongly favor a finding of marriage unless you can rebut them. The core elements tend to be whether there was a mutual agreement (usually implicit) to marry and whether you held yourself out that way. In a dispute both sides present their evidence and a judge decides. Of course in a dispute one side will be claiming there was no agreement. It's not contract law; the inquiry can be far less mechanical.

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rubicon33 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Hm, this flies in stark contrast to what I've been told and what I believed, but you're right as far as I can tell, common law marriage does not apply if you simply live with someone for a long time.

For the record I had heard this from a lawyer, not some random person.

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skissane a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.

It isn't true in California, it appears. It is true in a number of other places worldwide, Australia in particular.

Even in Australia, a de facto relationship – in which partners have a right to a property settlement upon separation – requires more than mere cohabitation of sexual/romantic partners. However, in practice, relatively few long-term cohabitating partners will be found not to be in a de facto relationship.

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colejhudson a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unless something has changed recently, I’m fairly certain California doesn’t recognize common-law marriages.

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soperj a day ago | parent | prev [-]

In BC it's 6 months.

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jjice a day ago | parent [-]

Really? Looks like two years from their site.

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/divorce/famil...

	▲	soperj a day ago \| parent [-]
		it's 6 months to be common law in terms of employer benefits.