Mueggenborg v. Walling

The court upholds today the nisi prius ruling that the parties to this appeal had not entered into a common-law marital relationship.1 Although I accede to the court’s judgment and concur in its pronouncement, I write separately to correct the faulty exposition of common-law marriage that crept into some of our extant jurisprudence. The significance of cohabitation2 in the context of a common-law marriage has suffered from several decades of irreconcilably discordant jurisprudence.3 This case presents an opportunity to reinfuse the body of our unwritten law4 with the ancient lore that regards…