Oh NOW I understand why Elspode feels the nation is fascist
 

Cause where he lives it sometimes is!!! Read on and vomit.

Unwed couple sues town over housing flap

This is actually a fairly common ordinance in towns trying to keep college students at bay... of course, that doesn't make it right.

This started earlier this year, IIRC. Some suburbs here in St. Louis still require occupancy permits for homes and apartments, Black Jack being one of them. The family fought the definition with the City Council, but lost a few months ago.

While I think the couple is stupid for not marrying (13 years? Come on now!), Black Jack is even more stupid. I guess they don't like tax revenues.

Of course, I believe MO still has a law that officially prohibits an unmarried man and woman from living together.

No common law marriage in Mo?

No. I thought IL did, but they don't either...only 15 states and DC.

Town right next to University of Dayton (Oakwood) has that same ordinance. Utter BS.

http://tinyurl.com/jagg6

Some background on this story, based on what I heard on the radio yesterday:
--Person wants to set up fruit/vegetable stand in Pevely
--Person gets a hard time from Pevely's city government
--A state permit to sell your own bounty is not necessary
--Mayor sells his own tomatoes from his house
--Mayor draws ire of some residents

Does anyone know why common law marriage was introduced? It's a really dumb concept in my opinion, if a couple is intentionally NOT getting married then they probably don't want to be told they are now married due to time spent together.

Also, even though it's a stupid law it really doesn't qualify as fascist. Fascist is now just a buzzword people throw around indescriminantly.

Initially, it was because there were some people who literally couldn't afford to get married, because of the various government and officiator fees. Now it has become easier and cheaper to get married. My parents were common-law married, because they both thought weddings were dumb and didn't want to bother with the hassle of getting a marriage license from the government.

Some folks misuse it as a suffix as well.

Sounds like you need our Human Rights law.

Over here if anyone tries to prevent someone doing what they want then that someone claims their human rights are being abused/infringed and, lo and behold, they get their way.

May sound good, but the trouble is every Tom Dick and Harry uses it when they are in a situation they don't like - even (maybe that should be 'mainly') criminals who all too easily when trying to be brought to justice will use the Human Rights Act to turn the tables.

As an example we find that attempts to deport terrorist agitators are thwarted because the individuals claim that we are denying them their human rights to stay here as a place of safety rather than their homeland where they would be under threat of death from their government.

Just shows the sorts of mess we land ourselves in, what with the wierd rules and regulations aired here in this thread and then the equally wierd outcome from a law that's meant to bring the situation into balance. Prime examples of what you get when people stick their oars in attempting to make inappropriate improvements - they only end up creating as many (maybe more) problems than existed in the first place.

The best action would probably be to remove common law marriage from the books. It doesn't serve any meaningful purpose, and it's only going to muddle things further in the future. In states allowing gay marriage for example, you'll run into trouble with people making legal comittments they never intended too. As a college student I'd have to watch my housing agreements very carefully, and make sure I never shared an apartment with anyone long enough for CLM to kick in. Sounds weird? Not really, I'm sure there are plenty of scumbag guys out there who'd take advantage of having a legal right to half my belongings. It's just too outdated to keep around.

If you don't graduate before CLM kicks in, then give it up. :lol:

Unless you "present" yourself as being married, you'd have to live together a very long time to be ensnared into CLM against your will. Having a kid or two would shorten that, however.

There are still places in this country where doing the paperwork and finding someone "authorized" to marry people, could be expensive and time consuming.
In the distant past, those places were not hard to find. Also in the distant past, people didn't feel right about "living in sin"...and had even stronger feelings about their neighbors, "living in sin".