Mark wrote, <<... Ultimately she [the cohabitee] lost [her claim to inherit] because the daughter [presumably of an earlier regular marriage] said she had never been more than her father's "bide in" i.e. cohabitee. ..... Needless to say there was a house at stake. ....>> The point I made earlier regarding 'habit and repute' and inheritance rights was not based on any legal expertise. It is my understanding that although the cohabitee has no such inheritance rights any children of that relationship do have such rights. Maybe Mark could comment further. Sandy ________________________________ From: Mark Sutherland-Fisher <info@highland-family-heritage.co.uk> To: aberdeen@rootsweb.com Sent: Monday, 22 February, 2010 6:09:29 Subject: Re: [ABERDEEN] marriages book: Habit and Repute Evening everyone, As it happens I took what was probably one of the last cases of a "habit and repute" marriage to the Court of Session in the late 1980s for a Ross-shire client who had lived with her "husband" for around a decade. She had originally been his housekeeper but became known as his wife. His daughter opposed the claim and so it was fought out in Scotland's highest court of first instance. Ultimately she lost because the daughter said she had never been more than her father's "bide in" i.e. cohabitee. Many other witnesses had said they lived socially as a married couple and were called as such. Needless to say there was a house at stake. Mark -----Original Message----- From: aberdeen-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:aberdeen-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Gordon Johnson Sent: 21 February 2010 08:26 To: aberdeen@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ABERDEEN] marriages book ** The "habit and repute" version appears to be finalised by a court case of one kind or another, where the court rules the marriage legal; and the couple normally have been together for a long time (10 years plus).  I think the most common case is one of inheritance. The promise subsequente copula version seems to revolve around witnesses being present at the declaration, and the witnesses being reliable. One case showed that a witness was an employee of the man and was discounted as unreliable. Once again, it is a court case which proves/disproves the marriage. Because the book is concerned with legal cases, I suspect that it would ignore instances where the marriage had been registered. This is my (condensed) reading of the book. Gordon. On 21/02/2010 08:00, aberdeen-request@rootsweb.com wrote: > Gordon Johnson wrote: >> >  ** According to the book "Marriages, regular and irregular", by "an >> >  Advocate" (William Hodge, Glasgow, 1893), any of these irregular >> >  marriages only are legal if both parties are free to marry, and both >> >    consent to the apparent marriage. > That sounds like an interesting book. > > Does he say anything about the mechanics of Irregular Marriages, and in > particular, how a marriage "with habit and repute" or by "promise > 'subsequente copula'" might have been brought in line with the separate > legal requirement to register marriages? > > The mechanism for having marriages "by declaration" accepted by the > Registrar are fairly well known, but I am puzzled as to how the other > two types might have been homologated - or how the "deserted wife" of > such a marriage might have gone about having her errant "husband" > brought back into the conjugal fold. > > > Gavin Bell ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ABERDEEN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ABERDEEN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message