“Brian Gill and Rodney Van Nostrand were in a romantic relationship and cohabited for several years beginning in 2004,” begins Judge Phyllis Thompson’s opinion for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Gill v. Van Nostrand, 2019 WL 1827998, 2019 D.C. App. LEXIS 159 (April 25, 2019). “After their romantic relationship waned, and a few months after Mr. Van Nostrand had a ceremonial wedding in Brazil to another man he had met while … <Read More>
same-sex common law marriage
Pennsylvania Superior Court Recognizes Pre-2005 Same-Sex Common Law Marriage
Pennsylvania abolished common-law marriage by statute effective January 24, 2005, but provided that the statute should not be “deemed or taken to render any common-law marriage otherwise lawful and contracted on or before January 1, 2005, invalid.” After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, holding that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, implicitly affirming Whitewood v. Wolf, 992 F. Supp. 2d 410 (M.D. Pa. 2014), a trial court … <Read More>