How do I indicate we have been living AS married for 27 yrs, but not official.

Question

Categorization:  We are NOT married, but have been living as such.  We are not officially husband and wife.

Answer 1

For many places, a couple living as married for a length of time and/or share bills, etc. are married under Common Law.  You can specify in the biography that the couple never "officially" married through the court system but still connect them as married on their profiles.

Answer 2

If you have children, you can add the children as offspring of their mother and father - DO NOT USE the spouse link to add you to your partner.

There is actually no way to connect you without being "married" if you do not have children to make that connection.  You can always add a note on the bio that says you are common law rather than official.

Answer 3

You might be interested to read this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage

Answer 4

The partner would be fine as a spouse, but do not put a married date if you wish to distinguish living with partner as married. You would lose the 27 years (impressive, and congratulations) as being identified, but as structured now, the fields availalbe do not seem to allow cohabitation or common law relationships. Especially if children exist from the relationship, I would think you want the partner as spouse. Mazeltov, cheers, or mud in your eye - whichever ever suits your fancy!

Answer 5

Bob,

Currently, wikitree has no option other than "married" for identifying a partnership relationship between two individuals. Many of us have asked for alternatives but have apparently not made a sufficient case for site leaders to make the change.

The next best option is to explain the partnership in the narrative, linking to your partner's profile in your narrative and linking to your profile from hers.

Alternatively you can add her as a married spouse using the marriage function but explain the non-married  context in the narrative.

Neither is ideal, but that's what we've got to work with.

Answer 6

It's not visible due to privacy but on my profile I've used the date we got together and wrote not married.in the place field.

Bit of a bodge but I've seen other people put married or mistress in the marriage field. We've been together for 24 years, have three kids, been faithful, it's functionally a marriage.

Gay guy I know got married. It's not legally recognised but he had a big wedding and all the rest. He's got a date and place but, as per comments below, would we really not enter it because it wasn't Court recognised?

Sure the details can be put in the biography, but they can be missed there.

If guess there's a question of where do you draw the line, and it's not like I think I'm suggesting adding every last girlfriend and boyfriend is fine, but 27 years is married as far as I'm concerned.

Comments

Be aware that putting a non-location in the place field gets flagged as an error and will likely get "fixed" once the profile becomes open.