Barker v. Baker

HOWELL, Chief Judge:

After the intestate death of Barbara Carolyn Meares, Robert Barker filed a petition in probate court, claiming he was Meares’s common-law husband. The probate court rejected Barker’s petition, concluding he failed to establish the existence of a common-law marriage. Barker appealed to the circuit court, which affirmed the decision of the probate court. Barker again appeals, and we likewise affirm.

I

Meares, a Home Demonstration agent with the Clemson Extension Service, met Barker and began a sexual relationship with him in the mid 1960’s. In 1970, after the death of Meares’s…