Legal Question in Family Law in Texas

3 questions - all pertain to Texas. 1) If a man is married in TX & his wife refuses to give him a divorce & then he gets into a common law marriage - is the common law marriage legal or is he considered a bigamist?

2) My so called brother in law is claiming that because my sister has hospital bills & he can't afford them that it is my legal responsiblity to pay them & if I don't send him money he is going to sue me (they have 3 capable adult children)

3) My so called brother in law claims that if I set foot in the state of TX he can legally have me declared as legally incompetent, have me "locked up" and take control of my finances?

Any of this true?


Asked on 10/26/11, 4:30 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
M. Elizabeth Foley The Law Office of M. Elizabeth Foley

1) You cannot effectively "refuse" to divorce your spouse in Texas--even if only one spouse wants the divorce, if they're willing to follow through with it, the court will grant the divorce (though it will probably end up requiring a trial). If you do not get divorced, whatever your reasoning may be, any future "marriage" of any variety would be considered bigamy and cannot be valid as long as the first marriage remains valid.

2) No, you would not be legally responsible for the care of your sister unless you'd voluntarily taken on guardianship or something.

3) I have no idea what sort of competency proceeding he'd talking about, but normally speaking, there's a multistep process involved in which you have to prove (and have doctors agree with you) that someone has committed some act showing they're a danger to themselves or others to have them "locked up" (committed) for any period of time, and a brother in law with whom you've had an antagonistic relationship is probably not going to be in a position to be able to do that.

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Answered on 10/26/11, 5:48 pm


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