Legal Question in Family Law in Texas

Re: Marriage License

I would get back to the minister and have him submit a corrected license date. It apears to be a simple scribner's error.

Re: Marriage License

Thank you for allowing me to address one of my favorite misconceptions. Most people seem to believe that if a couple "lives together" for a certain period of time then they are common law married (properly know as "marriage without formalities"). The time periods that I have heard range from three days to seven years.

Actually, there is NO prescribed time period. The three things that MUST happen to have a common law marriage are (1)the couple must AGREE to be married, (2) they must live together AFTER that agreement, and (3) they must represent to others that they are married.

Even if the minister put the wrong date on the license, in your case, the marriage took place and is legal. However, this is where common law marriage comes in frequently. Contrary to popular opinion, one of the biggest benefits of a common law marriage law is that when two people intend to marry but there is a technical defect (e.g., they didn't wait the prescribed time to get married, the preacher really wasn't one, etc.) then they almost always have met the three tests of a common law marriage and are legally married. This is extremely significant if, for example, the defective marriage was not discovered until after a child was born.

Although claims of common law marriage are frequently used to attempt to obtain property after a non-married couple split up or to obtain an interest in an estate after a person dies, the case of legitimizing a marriage that was intended to be legal but was not serves a very valuable public service.