Editing Common-law marriage (section)

==History==
In ancient Greece and Rome, marriages were private agreements between individuals and estates. Community recognition of a marriage was largely what qualified it as a marriage. The state had only limited interests in assessing the legitimacy of marriages. Normally, civil and religious officials took no part in marriage ceremonies and did not keep registries. There were several more or less formal ceremonies to choose from (partly interchangeable, but sometimes with different legal ramifications) as well as informal arrangements. It was relatively common for couples to cohabit with no ceremony; cohabiting for a moderate period of time was sufficient to make it a marriage. Cohabiting for the purpose of marriage carried with it no social stigma.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021}}

In medieval Europe, marriage came under the jurisdiction of [[canon law]], which recognized as a valid marriage one in which the parties stated that they took one another as wife and husband, even in absence of any witnesses.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021}}

The [[Catholic Church]] forbade [[Clandestinity (Catholic canon law)|clandestine marriage]] at the [[Fourth Lateran Council]] (1215), which required all marriages to be announced in a church by a priest. The [[Council of Trent]] (1545–1563) introduced more specific requirements, ruling that future marriages would be valid only if witnessed by the pastor of the parish or the local ordinary (the bishop of the diocese) or by the delegate of one of said witnesses, the marriage being invalid otherwise, even if witnessed by a Catholic priest. The Tridentine canons did not bind the [[Protestants]] or the [[Eastern Orthodox]], but clandestine marriages were impossible for the latter since their validity required the presence of a priest. England abolished clandestine or common-law marriages in the [[Marriage Act 1753]], requiring marriages to be performed by a priest of the [[Church of England]] unless the participants in the marriage were [[Jews]] or [[Quakers]]. The Act applied to [[Wales]] but not to Scotland,{{Efn |Scotland abolished marriage by habit and repute in 2006.<ref>{{cite web |title=Abolition of marriage by cohabitation with habit and repute |url=http://legislation.gov.uk/asp/2006/2/section/3 |work=Family Law(Scotland) Act 2006 |publisher=[[UK Statute Law Database]] |access-date=30 April 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110101063517/http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2006/2/section/3 |archive-date=1 January 2011 }}</ref> |name= |group=note}} which retained its own legal system by the [[Acts of Union 1707]]. To get around the requirements of the Marriage Act, such as minimum age requirements, couples would go to [[Gretna Green]], in the south of Scotland, or other border villages such as [[Coldstream]], to get married under Scots law. The Marriage Act 1753 also did not apply to Britain's overseas colonies of the time and so common-law marriages continued to be recognized in what are now the United States and Canada.

Marriages ''per verba de praesenti'', sometimes known as common-law marriages, were an agreement to marry, rather than a marriage.<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Misunderstood Contract Per Verba De Praesenti|ssrn=1504026|publisher=Rebecca Probert, University of Warwick, School of Law|date=2009-11-14|last1=Probert|first1=Rebecca}}</ref>