LISTOWNER: I have sent this to Mr Anderson privately. Post it only if you think it of general interest.  Here is a copy of something I wrote for another list. You may find it relevant.  A listmember asks:   > What makes common-law marriages wrong?  A common-law marriage is not necessarily wrong in itself. There is nothing in the Bible (Old or New Testament) about getting married by a preacher, or by a priest (Jewish or Christian). And in fact Jewish priests have never had any connection with weddings.  There is a common notion that the marriage is performed by the clergyman. In fact, the traditional Christian view (at least in the West) is that the bride and groom are the ministers of the marriage, and that the clergyman is there only as a witness.  HOWEVER!  The essential ingredient of a marriage is mutual commitment. Two persons are considered to be married if and only if they have bound themselves by mutual promises to live together as husband and wife, forsaking all others, till death do them part.        The reason why those who have reason to be concerned about who is married to whom have always insisted on some kind of public ceremony is in order that society, and the couple themselves, may be clear about whether a commitment has been made.  Suppose that we do away with the public ceremony, the standard vows, etc. Instead, we have a man and a woman settling down to live together.       After a year or so, the man says to the woman: Hey, honey, it was great while it lasted, but I think it's time to move on.       She says: What are you talking about?       He says: I am leaving you and looking for someone prettier and younger.       She says: But you can't. We are married!       He says: What are you talking about? We never got married.       She says: I remember distinctly what you said to me the night we first made love. You said: "My love for you is as deep as the ocean, as eternal as the stars. As long as I live, I am yours, utterly and completely. When I lie on my deathbed, my last feeble breath will utter your name. My..."       He says: Oh that! That was just rhetoric. Just poetry. When a man is in a romantic mood, he is bound to say all kinds of silly things like that. You mustn't take them literally.  And that is why you have an insistence on a formal ceremony that is a matter of public record.       The Church insists on it, because it is her duty (among other things) to give moral advice, and you cannot give a man moral advice about his relations with a woman if you have no idea who is married to whom, if anybody, and vice versa.       The State insists on it, since the state has a concern with property rights, with child care and support, and therefore needs to know who has made what commitments to whom.       Prospective fathers-in-law insist on it, because they don't want their daughters seduced and abandoned.       Prospective spouses insist on it, because they want to make sure they know whether what they are hearing is a real commitment, or just "poetry."       And persons making vows themselves insist on making them formally and publicly, in order that they may be clear in their own minds about what it is that they are doing, and may know themselves that this is not just rhetoric. This is the real thing.        Hence the insistence on a formal public explicit avowal of the marriage commitment.  The Church goes further and insists that, when Christians marry, a clergyman shall be present at the wedding and record the vows on behalf of the Church, not because it is impossible to have a valid wedding without a clergyman, but in order to make sure that the couple understand what the Christian teaching about marriage is, and that they are in fact promising to be married in a Christian sense. The Church also prefers a standard marriage vow, and is wary of letting couples Write their own vows, for much the same reason that lawyers prefer standard terminology when they draw up a will or a contract. Certain language has been repeatedly used in wills, and one can be sure how the courts will interpret it. Try to say the same thing in your own words, and you may find that the probate judge's interpretation of them is not at all what you intended.  Similarly, the Church prefers to avoid endless debates about whether "You are my main squeeze" and "I am here for the long haul" do in fact cover the same territory as "forsaking all others" and "till death do us part."        This topic has come up on the list before. (Is there any topic that hasn't?) One listmember was asking, "If a couple love each other and are living together, isn't that marriage in the eyes of God?" Eventually someone asked, "In that case, what is their status if they break up? Is that the moral equivalent of getting a divorce? Are they in a relationship that God forbids either of them to walk out on? " The original questioner said: "Good grief, I never thought of that!" In fact, there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that someone who says, "We don't need a piece of paper or a ceremony in front of a judge or a preacher in order to show that we love each other," is trying to have it both ways -- to have the advantages of marriage plus the option of changing his mind with a minimum of bother.  At this point someone may say, "None of this applies to me and my mate. We are quite clear on the fact that we have assumed a lifelong commitment, 'for better or worse, forsaking all others, till death us do part.' So in our case, no ceremony is needed."      To this my reply would be: The reason for requiring a driver's license is to keep dangerous drivers off the road.  What is wrong in itself is not the existence of unlicensed drivers, but the existence of dangerous drivers. However, testing and licensing drivers is an obvious and reasonable means of pursuing the goal of reducing the number of dangerous drivers on the road. Therefore the State rightly makes and enforces such laws, and you the citizen have a positive moral obligation to refrain from driving without a license no matter how much of a hotshot behind the wheel you think you are.  Back to the original question. We have a listmember who knows a couple who have been living together for around 20 years. He asks: At what point did they stop fornicating and start being married? I answer: at the point, if any, where they both definitely and explicitly accepted an obligation to be faithful to each other, for better or worse, as long as they both lived. If they have accepted such an obligation, what are their reasons for not being willing to declare it in front of, say, a justice of the peace?