hello,

my niece has been living with a man for 3 yrs. he went from a decent individual to an abusive tyrant over this past year and it's escalating. he hasn't physically abused her, but he has gone after his oldest son a couple times.

he is throwing her out along with her 8 yr old twins and giving her nothing even though he has about $50K in savings. they were engaged to be married for a year and she has a ring as does he.

he pays child/spousal support to two ex-wives. he has 7 children by these wives. she traveled with him to Michigan last year to support him in a child custody battle with wife #2.

he has been the primary wage earner and makes good money. but, she has also contributed to the household accnts from a pt time job. she has helped rear 5 of his children during their custody visits in summers, etc. they all love her.

her signature is on nothing, not the condo lease or his accnts. you control the money, you have the power.

given California's myriad laws regarding community property, common law, etc., isn't she entitled to some recompense given that they were in a relationship to which she contributed?

thank you for your help.

If she wants to resist moving out, she can choose not to leave until a court formally evicts her. He doesn't owe her anything - no matter how much he has in savings. If she wants the protections of marriage and the potential for things like alimoney to be awarded in a divorce, then she needed to ACTUALLY marry him. Being engaged isn't "Marriage lite".

That was nice of her, but not legally relevent.



She and her children lived in the household. She SHOULD have been contributing.



That was nice of her, but still not legally relevent, nor does it create some sort of debt to her on his part. He can claim equally that he helped raise HER children.


Unfortunate, but a fact that people fail to understand every day. (Why on earth do mothers not teach their daughters this stuff??????????). She's still considered a tenant, and if he wants her gone, he'll have to evict her if she doesn't want to move out. Since there wasn't a marriage, what's his is his, what's hers is hers, and what they chose to co-mingle isn't protected by the divorce process. Hopefully she'll understand after this that putting your life, assets, monies, etc., in the hands of someone without the protections of either a formal contract or the protections of the marriage contract, is a terrible idea.

No, she's not. California only recognizes a common law marriage if it was one already recognized in another state. California itself does NOT have common law marriage recognition, and even if it did, her situation wouldn't qualify as a common law marriage anyway. It takes MUCH more than simply living together - it takes acting and presenting AS IF married - that means doing things like filing taxes together, jointly owning property, etc.

The bottom line is that she over-invested in this relationship and did so without the legal protections afforded by the marriage contract and the divorce process. The court will expect that she contributed to a household where she lived with her children. The court isn't going to entertain alimoney (not married).

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I have to agree with aardvarc on this. Have you browsed through the information in LawInfo's Free Legal Resource Center to learn more about your issue yet? See: http://www.lawinfo.com/consumer.html and http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/index.html. You can certainly try to speak to a lawyer to determine what legal options may be available. In the meantime, you may be able to learn more on your own. Search the "Free Legal Resources" tab, or browse the Consumer Resources. Good luck.