Reply #8: Although the court battles have generallyl been regarding

[Ms. Toad]

rights of surviving spouses, etc., a common law marriage is a legal marriage for all purposes (including federal and state tax purposes, health insurance, hospital visitation, etc.) It is just that most folks in common law marriages didn't really know they were legally binding marriages anyway until one of them no longer wanted to be married - or died.

But - the real problem with this path is that virtually all common law marriages are premised on the couple being eligible to to marry under the state marriage statutes (to prevent someone doing an end run around restrictions on who can marry whom by creating a common law marriage). So - to go the common law marriage route, you would have to change the state marriage statutes so that same gender couples could marry - and once you've changed them, why bother with a common law marriage.