Recommended Citation

Tom Andrews, Not So Common (Law) Marriage: Notes from a Blue State, 6 Est. Plan. & Community Prop. L.J. 1 (2013), https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-articles/579

Authors

Tom AndrewsFollow

Not So Common (Law) Marriage: Notes from a Blue State

Publication Title

Estate Planning and Community Property Law Journal

Keywords

common law marriage, marital property

Document Type

Article

Abstract

One of the continuing challenges for American marital property law in the twenty-first century, broadly understood, is what to do about property disputes between domestic partners who are not married. More precisely, the challenge is determining what to do when there are property disputes between unmarried intimate partners, whether heterosexual or homosexual. From what I can tell, this is as much of a challenge in Texas as it is in the rest of the country.

In the northwest corner of the country, we have a set of attitudes that, like many social and cultural norms, have found their way into our common law. These northwestern attitudes might not be so common, or at least so commonly understood, in Texas. Thus, the purpose of this article is to describe how my Blue State of Washington handles property disputes between domestic partners, as well as to discuss what Texas might be able to take from a Blue State approach.