Ana Mitchell Córdova, of the Estate Planning Journal, has made available for download her article “First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage: Cohabitation as a Framework for Conflicts Between Community Property and Common Law Marriage”, published in the Estate Planning Journal. The abstract is as follows:
In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States legalized same-sex
marriage.1 This occasion was momentous, but the decision also led to
numerous other issues related to marriage and property.2 A big question was
whether Obergefell would apply retroactively or prospectively because both
options would have significantly different impacts on property distribution.3
In the intervening time, precedent has indicated that Obergefell is applied
retroactively, but this precedent does not resolve all issues related to the
interplay between marriage and property.4 Texas happens to be the only state
in the entire United States that possesses both community property and
common law marriage systems, which can complicate property distribution.5
Obergefell’s impact raises even more thorny issues to consider.6
The remainder of this introduction will begin to address key concepts in
Texas law, including separate property, community property, the homestead,
and how marriage is organized.7 Part II will present a hypothetical fact
situation that incorporates these concepts and produces problems related to
community property, common law marriage, and property distribution.8 Part
II also discusses consequences that may arise from these problems and the
lack of a clear solution for them.9 Part III takes a deeper dive into community
property as a system of property organization, its history, how it works in
Texas, and how it impacts property distribution upon death in Texas.10 Part
IV similarly addresses common law marriage in more depth, its history,
theories for its adoption, and efforts to abolish it.11 Part V summarizes the
sociopolitical and legal context surrounding how people choose to live
together as well as the negative sentiment towards and negative treatment of nse as a framework through which to examine formal marriage, common
law marriage, and other ways
people organize their relationships.13
Additionally, Part VI analyzes different methods of recognizing relationships
and how other jurisdictions grant property rights according to these
methods.14 Part VII considers all the aforementioned concepts and offers a
solution to the problems created by the hypothetical, and lastly, the
conclusion in Part VIII reviews main points and this Comment’s goals.15
To read the full article, click: “First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage: Cohabitation as a Framework for Conflicts Between Community Property and Common Law Marriage”
Posted by Marin Larkin, Associate Editor, Wealth Strategies Journal.
Wealth Strategies Journal 