Does the "common law marriage" still prevail in your state?
Most states still have common law marriages, where after seven years of living together, you are considered to be legally married to each other. Question: does your state still consider common law marriages legal by law?
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In South Carolina, common law marriage is still legal.
Actually, when I researched this a few years ago for my mom, there were only like 11 states that still recognized “common law marriages”. I just looked it up and according to this site, it’s down to 9 (Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Iowa, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas) states and D.C. and 5 states have “grandfathered” common-law marriage.
None of those are my current state.
My daughter had a 20-year -relationship in Rhode Island. After seven years, they were considered common-law and were able to buy a house together, share medical insurance connected with his position at Brown, etc.
In England, common-law marriages, despite widespread belief to the contrary, have no basis in fact.
“Maryland does not allow the creation of a “common law” marriage, a relationship in which a couple lives together but have not participated in a lawful ceremony. Unlike some other states, in Maryland a couple cannot acquire marital rights and responsibilities by living together for a particular period of time.”
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The UK does this as far as social security benefits are concerned (and you don’t even have to live together for 7 years – living together at all for any length of time counts). But for any legal rights afforded to married couples, it never counts no matter how long you are together. So effectively if living together but unmarried, you get all the responsibilities but no rights.
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