Common Law Marriage: A Legal Institution for Cohabitation

The extraordinary recent increase in rates of cohabitation and non-marital birth presents a major challenge to traditional family law principles, and the legal rules governing cohabitation are thus among the most hotly contested areas of family law and policy today. In many nations, courts, legislatures, and law-reform bodies are reinventing common law marriage, seemingly without any sense of its history, doctrinal development, or limitations.brThe current law surrounding common law marriage is extremely complex. Professor Goran Lind has undertaken the demanding task of writing the most well-researched text on this topic to date. Separated into three Parts, Common Law Marriage covers the origins of the doctrine, its legal aspects in modern America, and the future of cohabitation law across the globe and in the 11 American jurisdictions that currently recognize common law marriage. It provides a cultural and historical history of the subject, from Ancient Roman Law to Medieval Canon Law, and analyzes over 2,000 American cases which have utilized the doctrine.brThis timely book is an excellent resource for scholars, legislators, and policymakers who are interested in the complex legalities of common law marriage.brThis is the definitive work on U.S. common law marriage. Scholars of family law across the US will be very glad Professor Lind undertook this project. Professor Lind's book provides very helpful information about how common law marriage developed. His chapters on informal marriage under Roman and Canon law, provide a helpful survey of the legal historical background out of which common law marriage emerged.brJ. Thomas Oldham, University of Houston Law CenterbrProfessor Lind's work is extremely timely and his research is extremely thorough. He offers both a contemporary and an historical perspective and his analysis is careful and thoughtful. It provides the information that policymakers and scholars need, and does so in a thorough and unbiased