Marriage

As we prepare to celebrate Valentine’s Day, let’s take a moment to ruminate on how judges through the ages have addressed love and affection. We’ll start with Justice Jackson of the US Supreme Court, who authored a dissenting opinion for a 1942 case involving two people who had left their homes and respective spouses and set up housekeeping as husband and wife. Jackson first lamented that the case involved three...

So you want to live with someone to whom you are not married?  We call that “cohabitating” or “inviting a lawsuit.” Whatever. Cohabitation is legal, but that does not mean it is a relationship you should leap into lightly.  Before you make the move, you should consider the cautionary tale of Stephen Carl Smith and Mary Deneve. Smith and Deneve began living together in 1991. They neither married nor signed a cohabitation...

The Post-Thanksgiving Blues Reflections Bring Good Cheer With any luck, you have finished waving goodbye to the last of the relatives and returned to your home.  Home, a place where you can reminisce in private about all of the real and imagined slights, jabs and jibes made by that graceless, greedy, egocentric, are-you-sure-we-are-even-related mob.   Too soon?   Let’s steer your emotions towards a more productive use by reflecting on the differences between your moral...

Are you married? Amazingly, a lot of people cannot correctly answer that question. In Texas, you can be married formally or informally.  The formal way is when you sign a written declaration of marriage.  The informal way, also known as a common-law marriage, is when you and another person agree to be married, thereafter live together in Texas as spouses, and represent to others that you are married. The formal method is...