de facto relationships - common law marriages. Why can't they be added as a marriage?

Question

I have a lot of these types of relationships in my tree. Often related to people who were a little distanced from high society. Poor people, convicts, bushrangers etc... What is the problem with writing this in the location category? There is no specific time or place one of these relationships occur, they just do, however, in many cases, they are very significant.

When I do this, I constantly get people telling me that de facto relationship should have a capital D, or worse still coming along and deleting the information without even reading the profile.

Surely, there must be a way of recognising the validity of these relationships?

Comments

I agree Simon I have been with my partner for 42 years we have 4 children,9 Grandchildren and 2 Great Grandchildren. It would be nice to Recognise our relationship. I added my partner but the only choice was the marriage field.

---

I agree with you, Simon and Terry, that we shouldn't restrict our recognition of genealogically relevant partnerships only to those with legal/authoritarian documentation.

edit; addressing location field question:

The main problem with using the location field to enter non-location data is that it will trigger a suggestion.

Name, date, and location fields serve specific purposes and should not be used for different purposes. As others have commented, additional details belong in the biography.

---

de facto relationships and Common Law marriages are only legal when both individuals are legally free.  I have a distant family member who left his wife in the 1870's and ran off with another woman and they lived several states away from his first family.  He did not obtain a divorce and neither did his deserted wife.  He lived with the second woman and had 3 children by her and while they lived together as husband and wife he was not free to marry as he was still legally married to his first wife.  I noted the second family in his biography and included where they lived.

---

This demonstrates my point clearly.

The second family is entirely genealogically relevant. Perhaps even more so if there were no children born to the first marriage and/or it was a short-term marriage.

However, the second is not recorded systematically.

Another example in my case is that of a bigamist who was prosecuted. The marriage was entirely a sham to extract money out of a wealthy family. In this case, by Wikitree standards, I can record the marriage because it comes with a certificate, but in the former case, where there are children and descendants I cannot.

All this information and genealogy then becomes harder to track. From what I can see there is no strong rationale offered for things being the way they are.

Answer 1

Surely the location for the de facto marriage would be where they first started living together, that is, where they consummated the relationship.  That would be as close a defining location as the place of a (non?) de facto marriage.

Comments

I agree, when and where they start living together would be the data entered in the ''Marriage'' boxes.  Can be as indefinite as just a year and a state/province.  

In the case mentioned where the 2 ''spouses'' are already married elsewhere, obviously there can be no legal marriage anywhere except maybe Utah (?).  But they are living as spouses, and have issue, so the relationship is there.  One musn't overthink the program's definitions either.

Answer 2

Location is reserved for locations.  Mention it in the biography, not the marriage location.

You can mention that it was considered a common law marriage at the time.

Comments

In many ways, it does refer to a location. The location is everywhere they were married. De facto relationships are legal marriages. Does not matter if you have kids or not.

With church-sanctioned marriages, just one day of the event is being referred to?

I think there needs to be a way for these relationships to be highlighted in the 'data' for relationships.

---

Where are you writing common law? What profile do you have this on?  It might help.  If you have common law in the marriage location field, it is like the birth or death location and needs to be a city, state, country format, so if you are putting 'common law' in there it is not appropriate.

Many people recommend not having a marriage record, but I can understand the marriage record but you don't have a date and explain in both biographies that they had a common law marriage and mention the dates, if you know them.  I know that many states in the US accepted them as valid.

---

I agree with Linda. The location is for the location of the legal marriage, in part, so than anyone will know where to look for a supporting document. On the other hand, I do not see a problem with linking a couple as married, so long as they considered themselves married. In this case there will be no date or location, but the biography should reflect the facts of the matter. A large part of genealogy is documentation. It's not what you know, or think you know, but what you can prove.

Also, "D" looks more like it stands for divorced, than a little used term de-facto relationship. I would think either the entire place name was not spelled out completely or that the couple were divorced if I saw a D in the location and I would remove it, too. You can make a suggestion that there be a box to check that would indicate a de-facto relationship, just like there is a box to check if you do not wish to show a couple as linked by marriage. You should do that in a separate post and tag it with a tech related tag.

---

Also, like Linda points out, many states recognize common law marriages that meet certain criteria. I believe my own state requires a couple to live together for a minimum of five years. After that time they can apply for a certifying document. That would be very interesting to see in a profile. Likely, they could have a bunch of kids born before they were "certified!"

---

Although some states do recognise de facto relationships as legal marriages, some do not - and some countries do not.

---

In some states, you are considered common-law married after certain criteria are met, sometimes length of co-habitation.  If I remember correctly, Texas considers you married if you co-habitate and declare yourself as married in public.  So, if Joe Brown and Sue Smith moved in together on 2 June 1952 and started calling themselves Mr. and Mrs. Brown, then they would be considered married in the town where they moved in together on 2 June 1952.

---

SJ, Texas is bit trickier than that of other States that recognize common-law marriages.

A couple must (1) agree to be married, (2) cohabit, and (3) represent to others that they are married - and most importantly - (4) must sign a form provided by the county clerk (VS-180.1 Declaration and Registration of Informal Marriage).

Without signing the above mentioned form, they only "qualify" for informal marriage registration but are not legally recognized as married.

---

I suppose I should have been more specific with my question so I have tried again with a new answer. I think we can all agree that there are mechanisms that make "non-traditional marriages" legal (albeit varying from place to place)  I think Wikitree would be an improved resource if data about these relationships could be made explicit

---

It would be better if you started a new question.  It's rather bad form to select your own answer as 'Best Answer'.

I think that WikiTree is perfectly explicit with its data fields.  After all, a man in a marriage OR common-law marriage is still a 'husband', isn't he? And a wife is still a wife.  The place to put that their husband-wife relationship was common-law is in the Biography, as has already been said.  It is perfectly visible.

Answer 3

De facto relationships, where people live together and have children are very important for genealogical purposes. They are legal. I think the best way around this is to be really vague with the location, which won't help from an accurate data perspective at all.

I understand what a location is. I think that the Wikitree database should accommodate these relationships and other forms of "non-traditional relationships" to be recorded explicitly. In a huge number of situations, traditional marriage is not a precursor to starting a family or having children.

Currently, the only way of doing that is to use a non-location (i.e de facto relationship), which people seem to want to expunge from the system (or claim this location should have a capital D) or be really vague about the location to include all the places they were married in (too bad if they were international travellers or astronauts), which does not help anyone to keep track of what is going on. As for sources, evidence of cohabitation would work or shared children.

My point is, Wikitree would be a more useful resource if forms of marriage outside of church or state-sanctioned ceremonies were recognised.

Comments

The blanket statement 'they are legal' is simply not universally true.  Only ten US states and the District of Columbia recognize common-law marriages within their borders, although all honor a valid one from a state that does allow it.

Did you answer your own question, and give yourself a Best Answer star? 

---

Yes because I was restating the question as it was veering off track not because I necessarily think it is the "best answer".

Wikitree has a broader reach than just the US and in the majority of the world, informal relationships do have legal implications. For example, most examples here referring to the process of legally formalising a relationship. However, this can happen in other ways. For example, with respect to custody battles, or child-support payments or even at the breakdown of a long-term cohabitating relationship. Which is why I don't want to be too specific about the mechanism of them becoming formal - but the statement that explicitly recording them would make Wikitree more useful for genealogical purposes.

---

Agreed with Herbert. Legality will vary from place to place, and must meet certain criteria. As we talked about below for Texas, Location is where the registration was filed.

When dealing with genealogical data, accuracy is of utmost importance, so wherever they became or legally met the requirements to become common-law should be the location used in the data field.

As an example, Wyoming does not recognize common-law marriages, but they recognize Texas' common-law marriages. So any reference to a common-law marriage and Wyoming is invalid and misleading.

---

I know common-law is stated in the question but the specific focus on this part of the question was not what was intended. I meant informal relationships and their importance to genealogy

---

Your premise that these relationships would became legal is not true in  many countries .

Nevertheless, I do think that wikitree guidelines are restrictive in suggesting only traditionally and legally married couples are linked as spouses. I have linked a couple as spouses because they lived as such  even though their original spouses were still living. They baptised and legally registered the children as if they were married. It is quite possible the children never knew their parents weren't married .I've explained that fully in the bio.

Having said that, I also think that using the location field for another purpose that has no shared or accepted agreement on its use is likely to confuse.(and be deleted as as error)

Answer 4

Are you trying to say that you want to use the text string "De facto" in the marriage location field?

That would be the wrong way to do it.

The Location field needs to be reserved for actual geographic locations. Not vague ideological "locations".

Use the biography text area to describe events that do not otherwise fit within the more limited traditional genealogical form fields

Comments

An informal marriage and its legality are not strictly limited to the same time definition as a traditional marriage. This is the only way of adding a location to an informal marriage. For example, it might refer to a state, region, entire country or otherwise.

It seems to be the only practical way of adding a location to an informal marriage while staying within the parameters and is not idealised, but a pragmatic solution.

---

If they could be formally recorded specifically in the Wikitree system, then there would be no need for this solution. I don't see how the statement - just put it in the profile is effective in addressing the problem that exists. It does not make it easy to trace the genealogy related to informal marriages, which is what specifically the problem is.

Answer 5

I'm not sure what you mean by 'de facto marriage'. Strictly, common-law marriages are legal marriages and should be recorded as straightforward marriages. They're legally equivalent to marriages by license; the only difference is in how the marriage is contracted.

However, people often think that living together for a certain amount of time produces a common-law marriage. Common-law marriage requires stating in words of the present tense a present intention to be married. That's obviously hard to prove, and the difficulty of proving it is a key reason most US states no longer recognize common-law marriages. (See for example this decision -- https://web.archive.org/web/20080307220128/http://www.courts.state.pa.us/OpPosting/CWealth/out/860CD02_9-17-03.pdf -- which led to Pennsylvania's no longer recognizing common-law marriages.)

(The Wikipedia article 'Common-law marriage' is a good introduction -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage )

If you're referring to other relationships, which aren't legally recognized, I'd think the great variety of relationships means that they're best recorded in the biography.

Answer 6

A de facto marriage is where a couple has the same rights as a legally married couple by the fact that they are living as a married couple. It is different to a common-law marriage. Quite often de-facto marriages are never official unless there is a reason to test them legally.

However, the point is being missed.

I am suggesting that for genealogical purposes, in terms of family relationships, the production of children, cohabitating, who people live with and when, births, deaths and marriages, these relationships are just as valid as a legal marriage but we don't systematically record them in Wikitree. In fact, we systematically exclude this information. I think the system is poorer for this

When data about these marriages are not systematically recorded historically we lose a lot of genealogical information or there are more barriers put in the way to understanding past family relationships. These types of relationships are not rare by any means and in some historical contexts are quite common.

In trying to define to how this is different from a legal marriage I have unintentionally steered the discussions away from this point.

I may try again in the next few days - perhaps with some clearer examples.

Thank's everyone for their comments thus far and I don't think voting up your own best answer is bad form, if it progresses the discussion (selecting a particular new point that has advanced on others).

I also selected answers that were not my own by this logic and advanced the discussion which is in line with the honour code.

Good night all.

Comments

Simon, I agree with you that there should be a way of recognising common law marriages. Without knowing all the details, they were recognised in Scotland at least during the 19C. Countries like New Zealand have recognised this relationship for some time, and until the term “partner” was used, people were often referred to a “my de facto” here. WikiTree users need to be reminded that the USA is not the only way things are done, and if the site is international, it must evolve to meet the needs of the wider community. While I disagree that the location field should be used, personally, I would find linking the two parties as spouses without a date and location, but with a comment in the bio, would be a suitable solution.

---

I applaud your efforts to raise support to enable wikitree to support the many weird and wonderful non traditional relationships that should be visible in the vital statistics summary at the top and not relegated to the biography.

Clear the term de facto is not a widely understood term in the US but it is her in Australia.

Back before divorce was easy and affordable it was not  uncommon form of second relationship.

I guess the key is to break the issue into tiny chunks. For me the first thing to knock on the head is the idea that a relationship has to be legally equivalent to marriage.

I like to bring up the case of a gay guy I know. He had a marriage, the full shebang with a celebrant, speeches, vows , ring exchange et cetera. There's a date and place of course, but his marriage was not legally recognised. But I think any reasonable person would count this as a marriage.

Answer 7

Unfortunately the "validity" of the use of the word marriage can have a variety of defintions even within a single country. Most genealogical programs around the world offer input options to describe the marital status. Wikitree is far behind in this area.

Answer 8

de jure relationships are commonly "church" marriages or civil unions.  de facto relationships began in the Middle Ages when people who wanted to get married couldn't  afford a church wedding. A ship's captain can also perform weddings,etc. Civil marriages evolved later.

For genealogical purposes,it doesn't matter if the marriage is de jure or de facto as the genes will be passed down from one generation to the next.

Mistresses also have been around forever, but thee was never any intent to form a marital union.

Comments

I think the definition of these marriages has changed since the middle ages. Yes, the genes are passed down from one generation to the next but currently, we only systematically record them for a narrow definition of marriage. Genealogically, we should try to match our data with how the genes are being passed down. This would include, dare I say it mistresses who have children borne to philanderers; the thorny issues of children born with unclear parentage etc. etc. If we have sources to prove these relationships, and they are genealogically important, then why not the option to record them.

---

I know it’s different in each country but In Queensland, Australia same sex  and heterosexual relationships  share many of the same rights as married couples. Also in Queensland a couple can also register their relationship. A defacto relationship is if you have lived together as couple for two years and you are given the same rights as a married couple.

Answer 9

I see this question has come up a number of times previously, now that I go through the related questions and despite a broad call for change, it has never progressed beyond that. I did do a search for de facto relationships before I asked the question but I did not see any relevant questions so I started a new one.

I am wondering what the role of a leader is here?

Surely there are at least one or two Wikitree leaders who are willing to engage with these member concerns and see them through to a conclusion where they have been addressed. I am still planning to ask a new question along the lines of developing a collaborative proposal about what these changes may look like and what valid concerns people may have from a genealogical and technical perspective.

Before I do this I want to see if there is any leader willing to put up their hand to facilitate communication around this discussion in line with their Wiktree position description. Now that I go back into the archives, I see it is an issue shared by many members.

Comments

You have a very valid point here, Simon. This issue keeps being avoided and I’m sure there is a way through where perhaps a radio button or something similar could show if there was a traditional marriage, but other relationships could be on a similar footing.

Answer 10

I'd hate for someone to come along after I was gone and call my cohabitations marriage in any sense. Govt/church marriage was an option, yet I chose to avoid that option for good reason. As a matter of respect to me, if I make a choice in my lifetime, I'd strongly prefer that genealogical researchers didn't come along later and say I was something I wasn't. I'd rather they respect my choice.

Answer 11

In Gramps, there are two separate data points for a relationship: there is the status of the relationship itself - eg civil union / married / unmarried / unknown - and there are (if relevant) events relating to that relationship, such as marriage and divorce. This permits recording of partnerships with differing or non-formalised status, and also the ability to note the difference between a relatonship which is known that there was not a formal recognition of the union, and one where it is not known if there was.