common law marriage

Federal Magistrate Rejects Retroactive Marital Privilege Claim for Connecticut Couple in Antitrust Case

In Antech Diagnostics, Inc. v. Veterinary Oncology and Hematology Center, LLC, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82947, 2018 WL 2254543 (D. Conn., May 17, 2018), U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam had to deal with a claim by defendants that certain correspondence between two men (one of them a named defendant) that was sought in discovery by the plaintiffs was protected by marital privilege.  Judge Merriam’s opinion does not set out the underlying facts … <Read More>

Pennsylvania Superior Court Recognizes Pre-2005 Same-Sex Common Law Marriage

 Pennsylvania abolished common-law marriage by statute effective January 24, 2005, but provided that the statute should not be “deemed or taken to render any common-law marriage otherwise lawful and contracted on or before January 1, 2005, invalid.” After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, holding that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, implicitly affirming Whitewood v. Wolf, 992 F. Supp. 2d 410 (M.D. Pa. 2014), a trial court … <Read More>

After Half a Century, Surviving Same-Sex Partner Tries to Inherit His Partner’s Estate

It seems that anything that could go wrong did go wrong – legally speaking, that is – when William Cornwell died on June 19, 2014, believing he had made a will leaving his entire estate to Thomas Doyle, the man with whom he had shared his life for more than half a century. Cornwell had not involved a lawyer in preparing and signing the will, apparently, because no lawyer would have made the simple mistake … <Read More>