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