Common-law marriage

make a public declaration of marriage to conclude a common law marriage existed. In order to prove the existence of a common law marriage, the party asserting the existence must show (1) present intent and agreement to be married; (2) continuous cohabitation; and (3) public declaration of the marriage. If all three elements are proven then a court will likely find that a common law marriage exists. On the other hand, there will be no conclusion of a common law marriage if at least one of the…

IS COHABITATION AN ALTERNATIVE TO MARRIAGE? Harder claims that the Canadian government has progressively gained more power to determine the nature of relationships between individuals, as is the case when common-law status is given, and that the government need not take the wishes and intentions of the individuals involved into account. This means increased state control over who is obligated to whom, and in what capacity, as well as who is deemed an appropriate recipient of the benefits and…

2011, the most controversial topic that year was the 72-day-marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. This alarming news made divorce seem like such a common, simple issue to be dealt with in no time. Divorce seems to be increasing each year, especially since this issue has become less taboo in more recent years. With the amount of divorces occurring each year, it is impossible not to wonder what causes them. “One in every two marriages end in divorce.” Does this broad, unclear statistic…

Do not Get Trapped Into Marriage! Many couples decide to jump into their new lives together by taking the first major step in a long term committed relationship: moving in together. Moving in with a high school sweetheart after one month because they are so in love and their parents just do not understand their love may not be top of the list for good ideas. The man that a woman met off Tinder the night prior who bought beers and tequila shots all night may also not be the most promising future…

for many and since it has been practiced for so long that it is now considered a norm, especially since most children now are born into the homes of unmarried parents. “Cohabitation is a common part of family formation in the United States, and serves both as a step toward marriage and as an alternative to marriage” (Jayson). Cohabitation itself all began when the meaning of a family was altered. People started to feel that even though they were not married they were still considered a family.…

The principle of lex talionis was an appropriate and just manner of maintaining order and civilization in ancient Mesopotamian society. The law suggested appropriate equal and equivalent settlements for civil, criminal and domestic matters. The code delineated suitable redress for a number of issues of the day. As the law of retaliation, lex talionis, reflects the idea that a punishment should fit the crime and that a victim is due equal compensation for his loss. Also referred to as the…

Blackstone proposed the declaratory theory, namely judges are ‘not delegated to pronounce a new law, but to maintain and expound the old one’. Lord Esher’s judgment in Willis v Baddeley contended that judges ‘frequently have to apply existing law to circumstances as to which it has not previously been authoritatively laid down that such law is applicable.’ They believe that judges’ role is just to discover law and apply it to different circumstances. However, this theory then was widely…

UNIFORM CIVIL CODE 1. INTRODUCTION The Uniform Civil Code is the code which arches over the Civil Law Code and administers the secular Civil Law rules to govern all people irrespective of their gender, caste, religion and tribe. The Uniform Civil Code mainly deals with issues related to acquisition and administration of property, marriage, divorce and adoption. An attempt to establish a Uniform Civil Code has also been made in the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution of India…

The concept of rule of law (ROL) was made popular in the 19th century by a British jurist called A. V. Dicey. The rule of law can be defined as the legal principle that a nation should be governed by the law, instead of being governed by decisions of individual that are the government officials. Basically, the law is subjected to every person in the country, the law that exercises limitation upon one’s behaviour including those who serve as government officials. The law has the utmost power and…

In her book, Poetic Justice, American philosopher and Professor of Law and Ethics Martha Nussbaum writes that when we read narrative, “we are, in effect, being constituted by the novel as judges of a certain sort.” (Nussbaum 83) She believes that the ideal judge is not one who can remove all emotion from his reasoning, but instead one who can serve as what Adam Smith called a “judicious spectator”; “capable of entering imaginatively into the lives of distant others and (having) emotions related…