Phases of Marriage
Premarital issues (anticipation of marriage); Marital issues (issues that arise when married, like what are the right and responsibilities that result from marriage); Termination of Marriage (validity of marriage- annulment, dissolution, void and voidable)
What are the requirements to marry?
Both CL + Ceremonial marriages require: (1) statutory age (2) not be bigamy (3) must agree to marry - intent matters.
CL: generally marriage has been defined as the voluntary union of a man and a woman. However, in the 1990s, the momentum for legalizing SSM took up. Congress passed DOMA to limit SSM recognition on a federal level. United States v. Windsor ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. Obergefell v. Hodges ruled that SSC had the fundamental right to marry.
What is Differences of Sexes and its impact?
GR: Marriage changes one's legal status and creates private rights and obligation.
CL: Upon Marriage: "H +W are 1,a nd H is that 1.
ML: Modern family law is based on the ideal of marital equality.
What is the GR for Marital Rights and Obligations
What is Equitable Distribution?
What is Marriage?
What is the State Interest to regulate marriage?
1. to protect citizens from economic, social, and physical harm; 2. children under statutory age; 3. Procreation; 4. Protecting kids; 5. Promoting stability of relationships; 6. Orderly distribution of property under death; 7. Preventing unqualified people from marrying; 8. Record keeping; 9. Enforcement of obligations derived from marital relationship.
What is Unrelated by Blood?
this act restored women's legal right to their property that they lost once they were married. Married women who owned property earned the legal right to litigate with people outside of their marriage. However, this did not restore full legal capacity to women because spousal immunity and other legal principles maintained male dominance within the family.
What is the Marriage Women's Property Act and its significance.
What is considered Marital property?
Pension, income made during the marriage, property purchased during the marriage, even if solely in your name, couples gifts, damages awarded for tort (think compensatory damages- lost wages)
Ceremonial and Common Law Marriage. Their differences are the ways in which marriage is recognized.
What are the two types of Marriage and their differences?
This case established that marriage is a fundamental right because the statute prohibited a white person from marrying someone who was not white. GR: Violation of the EPC (5th) when a statutory classification significantly interferes with the exercise of a fundamental right, it cannot be upheld unless it is supported by sufficiently important state interests and is closely tailored to effectuate only those interests (STRICT SCRUTINY) GR:Due Process (14th) the right to marry is one of the vital personal rights essential to the pursuit of happiness by free men.
Whaat is Loving v. Virginia?
1. Consent to Marry- 1. the parties must have the capacity to K. (must not be mental incapacitated, infirmity, under drugs, alcohol or other substance, entered into by duress, fraud. 2. Party must be physical capable to consummate the marriage by sexual intercourse AND at the time the marriage was solemnized, the other party did not know of the marriage. 3. A party was under the age of 16 and lacked parental consent or judicial approval OR was between the age of 16 or 17 and did not have parental or judicial approval. 4. The marriage is prohibited.
What are the Procedures Relating to Entry into Marriage?
1. Names - Wives were not legally required to take their husbands names. 2. Law of evidence (testimonial privilege): the witness spouse has the privilege to refuse to testify adversely; witness may be neither compelled or foreclosed from testifying against their spouse, (does not apply to child abuse). 3. Law of Torts - spouses could bring tort claims against the family and third parties. 4. Alienation of Affection - spouse retained the right to recover from a third party who was responsible for the transfer of affection from the P's spouse to them or another person. 5. Criminal Conversation- spouse could recover from a defendant for engaging in adulterous acts with P's spouse. 6. Spousal Consortium- ML: allowed a spouse to recover from a defendant if they caused injury to P's spouse.
Acts that Supported Private Rights (Individual Autonomy)
GR reverses common law rules and treats individual earning acquired during the marriage as joint property of H&W, regardless of title. Exception: property gifted, willed or acquired through interstate succession to only one of the spouses; what you inherit before marriage or gifts during marriage is not included in community of assets. Currently, they have moved from male management of property to sole, joint or equal management, depending on jurisdiction.
What is Community Property States (Minority)
What is Ceremonial Law?
Void marriages offend the strong public policy of a state, and are considered never to have happened. Ex: incest marriages, bigamy, below the absolute minimum. Anyone can raise this challenge.
Voidable marriages are valid until they are challenged, usually as a result of a court order for annulment. this can be raise only by the parties, and cannot be raised after the party dies.
What is Void and Voidable Marriage?
What are the elements and defenses for Alienation of Affection?
Elements: (1) plaintiff and spouse had a happy marriage; (2) wrongful or malicious acts from defendant; (3) caused P's spouse to alienate affection
In NC - must not have taken place after separation; must be brought within 3 years; only against a natural person.
Defenses: there was no happy marriage; Defendant did not know of marriage; P and spouse were separated prior to alienation of affection.
In the event where a separate property (like a bank account) gets mixed with marital property, it can become marital property if the court cannot trace back to the starting point of the separate property.
What is CL marriage?
One at a time - GR: one marriage at a time.
What are Substantive Requirements for Entering Marriage?
What are the elements of Criminal Conversation and its defenses?
1. A valid marriage
2. Sexual intercourse between P's spouse and defendant. P does not have to show D knew of marriage, just inclination and opportunity.
Defenses: Sexual intercourse occurred after separation; SOL; Connivance- P and spouse conducted a plan to entrap D.
In both CL and Community Property States, parties can agree to reclassify their property. GR: court views that party intended to gift their spouse the separate property, so it transmutes to a marital property. (Ex: spouse gives 10K of separate property to the building of a marital home).
What is transmutational change?