[Sca-cooks] Six and counting

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

On Fri, 7 Sep 2001, Peters, Rise J. wrote:

> When I took the VA bar, they taught us that Virginia did not recognize
> common law marriage.
>
> The "hotel thing" is a variation on "marriage by declaration" -- it's not
> that they register in a hotel, it's that they register as "mr. and mrs."
> thus holding themselves out to the world as a married couple.
>

Which is extremely period--the whole church validation was a thing pushed
by the church. You just had to state in front of witnesses that you were
married. Also, if a couple was cohabiting and there happened to be a legal
issue that involved them being married or not, and their *neighbors* bore
witness that they were married, well then, they were legally married.

Margaret FitzWilliam