GLASTONBURY, CONNECTICUT · FAMILY LAW + FAMILY-VIOLENCE DEFENSE
Connecticut does not have common-law marriage. Living together does not create a marriage here, regardless of how long — not after seven years, not after twenty, not if you share a home, children, and a surname.
That surprises people, often at the worst moment.
An unmarried partner has no claim to alimony and no claim to property division. The statutes that divide a marital estate apply to marriages. A long-term partner who left the workforce, raised children, or contributed to a home held in the other’s name has no family-law remedy simply by virtue of the relationship.
What remains are ordinary legal claims — contract, or claims about jointly titled property — which are harder, narrower, and brought in a different posture than a divorce.
Connecticut will generally recognize a common-law marriage that was validly formed under the law of another state that allows one. The statute is C.G.S. §46b-28a, which recognizes a marriage entered into in another jurisdiction and valid there, unless Connecticut law expressly prohibits it.
Two things make this narrower than it sounds.
That means meeting every element of that state’s law — including a present, mutual agreement to be married — while you were in that state. Connecticut’s Supreme Court rejected a claim built on annual two-week visits to common-law states over sixteen years. Vacations do not create a marriage.
The burden is on the person claiming the marriage, and it includes proving what the other state’s law requires. If that law is not proved, a Connecticut court presumes it matches Connecticut’s — which means no marriage.
This matters more in Connecticut than it might elsewhere, because Rhode Island still permits common-law marriage. Couples who lived there before moving here are the most common situation where this is worth examining.
An unmarried couple can set out in writing what happens to property if the relationship ends — who owns what, how a jointly purchased home is handled, how contributions are accounted for, what happens on death.
That agreement is a contract. It is not a marriage, and it does not create family-law rights. But it converts a situation with no default rules into one with agreed rules, which is the difference between a plan and a dispute.
The couples who most need one are the ones least likely to have one: long relationships, shared property, one partner contributing in ways that do not appear on a title.
Custody, parenting time, and child support do not depend on marriage. Those are available to unmarried parents on the same standards.
Unmarried parents get custody orders on the same standard as married ones — but parentage may need to be established first.
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What makes a Connecticut prenuptial agreement enforceable, what it cannot do, and the two mistakes that cause most of them to fail.
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Connecticut prenup and postnup attorney Daniel M. Morton on what makes an agreement enforceable — and why Connecticut’s property rule makes one worth having.
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