LogFAQs > #970401440

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

What kind of old-fashioned, borderline fascist, nonsense is this?

If people do not get the legal paperwork, they are not married. It is not the business of the government what goes on romantically (or not) behind your closed front-door.

By your own argument, it is the business of the government, because the legal paperwork of the government is literally the only thing that validates a marriage in the first place.

Sure, we could argue that people get married "in the eyes of God" or by whatever other standards they choose to acknowledge, but the world as a whole doesn't consider any of those things binding or meaningful unless a specific government acknowledges it.

Common-law marriage actually does have a purpose - it was useful at a time when communication was limited and there were places where authority wasn't present to confirm a marriage for legal purposes. All two people who wanted to be married needed to do was affirm that they considered themselves married, and if they'd spent enough time cohabiting and otherwise acting like a couple, then it counted.

It's also not as much of an issue as people are making it out to be, because it literally doesn't take effect unless both parties agree - at which point it isn't much different from filling out a marriage license anyway. You can't really be "involuntarily married" by accident just because you live with someone for a while. And most states have long since done away with it anyway... and the ones that haven't mostly treat it like other "obsolete" laws that no one bothers to repeal (ie, not really enforcing it).

Like, I can technically be arrested in New Jersey for eating pickles on a Sunday, but it's not like anyone is ever going to enforce that.